


Of Cats and Rabbits

by pomegranates_and_pretty_things



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Car Chases, F/F, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, James Bond Accidentally Adopts Two Disaster Children, James Bond Being James Bond, James Bond Takes Care of Q, James Bond’s A+ Parenting, M/M, Miscommunication, Mutual Pining, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Oblivious Q, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Protective James Bond, Romance, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Snarky Q
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:14:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 23,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23239792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pomegranates_and_pretty_things/pseuds/pomegranates_and_pretty_things
Summary: Bond has a habit of getting himself into trouble, but when an American agent turns up dead, Bond accidentally pulls Q along with him as a dark sequence of events begins to unfold.
Relationships: Eve Moneypenny & Q, James Bond & Eve Moneypenny, James Bond & Q, James Bond/Q
Comments: 24
Kudos: 80





	1. The American

Agent 007 was compromised, of that he was sure.

There was a dead man in his small hotel room, slumped in the chair by the window. Bond quickly swept the room for any signs that the killer may still be inside before walking further in. The body was an inconvenience, to say the least.

He’d been set up in a small room on the third floor for the past few nights, and the neon sign right outside the window flickered haphazardly, spilling bright red light into the otherwise dark room. The unnatural lighting filled the room with shadows that seemed to move and, had he been a normal patron, he may even have complained about the ominous look of the room in the dark, though he doubted any of the people who frequented this hotel ever truly cared about a noisy light.

Bond kept out of sight from the window, leaving the lights off. He had long since learned to work in the dark.

The dead man was slumped in the desk chair closest to the window, staring at the door with his jaw dropped in perpetual surprise, and there was a bloody smile drawn across his neck, spilling crimson on to his otherwise well pressed suit. The wound was thin and clean, but Bond knew well enough that it was likely deep enough to kill—this was a professional hit after all.

Bond scanned the room carefully. He felt around in the man’s jacket and pockets, digging around for any piece of evidence he could scrounge up in this otherwise buggered situation. The body was fresh and did not yet carry the stench of death, like copper and bile in the air, for which Bond was grateful, but that meant that the killer was not far off from Bond’s position. He recognized the man from the file Q had sent him; this was the American informant, Thompson, he had assumed stood him up earlier that day when he did not arrive at their scheduled handoff.

He found nothing on the body. There was no wallet. No cellphone— that explained why he had not been answering any attempts of communication all afternoon. No flash drive. That was what Bond really had been looking for from this man. The American agents often kept important information on a flash drive that they wore around their necks. Unfortunately, his poor informant had nothing around his neck but his own blood at that point.

The flash drive that Bond was meant to receive in the handoff was missing.

There was nothing else out of place in his room, leaving Bond to assume that the hit had been clean and organized. And the kill, itself, spoke of steady hands and a self surety that pointed to a killer with intimate knowledge of his craft.

This was a warning. Thompson had meant to meet with Bond, but very few had knowledge of either man’s whereabouts, save for their superiors and team members. Either it was meant to be a message to him, or this American had been a part of a bigger plot to send a sharp warning to the CIA.

If Bond were being honest with himself, it was not a shock to come back to his hotel room only to find a dead body. He'd known that something was amiss from the second that Thompson had not made it to the handoff that evening. Finding him dead was just confirmation that Bond had, in fact, stumbled upon something big.

He shifted his weight, his Walther already raised in preparation, and risked a look out the window. There was nothing discernible from his position.

“What’s going on, 007?” Q’s voice crackled to life in his ear.

Most agents refused complicated jobs without the help of the quartermaster on comms, because Q was the most diligent and clever of them all at MI6. It was common sense to want him along on the ride when things were no doubt going to get messy— the fact that the quartermaster had a voice that made half the 00’s want to bed him was beside the point.

That’s what they all told each other at least.

“Thompson’s dead,” Bond said, scanning the room again. He needed to move, but he had no information to go on past the body beside him, no further course of action. He didn’t yet know if he needed to disappear, head back to headquarters in England. It would be a shame if he had to leave already; he was just starting to enjoy all the beaches Chile had to offer.

“Well, that explains why he was a no show,” Q muttered. Bond could hear the faint tap-tap-tapping that meant that Q was working his magic.

Bond waited patiently for Q to decide the next move for him. With all the information that the other man had at his fingertips, it made sense to let him sort out any leads. Besides, Bond had been told off by M once this month already for being too bull-headed, and he was at least _trying_ to be a little better—for a short while, at least, to win back M’s favor.

If only M could see him now: sitting still, being patient.

Bond nearly snorted.

“Security cameras have been looped,” Q said.

“Can you un-loop them?” Bond had his answer immediately, based on Q’s very verbal scoff at his question.

“Of course I can, but that doesn’t mean I can recover the lost footage,” Q paused, his voice suddenly growing serious. “You’re about to have company, Bond. One person, ETA thirty seconds.”

Brilliant.

Bond immediately snapped into a steadier stance, his shoulders tensing as he quickly looked around the room for another exit strategy. The window was a last resort, but he kept it in mind. He’d survived much worse falls than one from three stories up. He pulled himself back into the shadows in the corner of the room that the neon light didn’t reach and waited.

He did not have to wait long.

The lock clicked faintly. The door swung open.

The newcomer did not reach for the light switch nor shut the door behind them. The crimson light flooding the room flickered, obscuring Bond’s view of the slim figure. The person immediately moved towards the body.

"Thompson!" By the sounds of her voice and accent, the newcomer was an American woman. She crouched beside Thompson. Her hands moved to Thompson’s neck. She was not reaching to check for a pulse—there was no need to see if Thompsom was truly dead, not when his blood had been drawn in a thin smile across his neck. She was also looking for his flash drive, but Bond knew she would come up empty, just as he’d done minutes before.

The woman’s shoulders sagged. She leaned back on her heels and closed her eyes. She sighed heavily. Bond knew what she was doing. He’d done it, himself, often enough in the field. This was how you gave a moment of mourning for someone you lost in the field, before you closed the lid on your emotions and got the job done.

Bond tilted his head. This woman was clearly a spy, though Thompson hadn’t spoken of a partner. Then again, Thompson also hadn’t spoken of someone else knowing about the handoff beside himself and Bond and their respective governments, and someone clearly had had intimate knowledge of both Thompson and Bond being in Chile.

The woman stood up gracefully and turned around. She froze when he saw Bond, though she didn’t look shocked.

To her credit, she did not immediately reach for the firearm in a holster on her hip hidden beneath her cargo jacket. She didn’t say anything. Her gaze traveled up and down Bond, most likely coming to the same conclusions about him as he had about her. There was no fear in her eyes.

She was _curious_.

"I didn't kill him," Bond said, jerking his head in the direction of the body slumped by the window. He lowered his gun, though he didn’t holster it. He was still unsure if this woman was a threat.

"Are you here to kill me?" The woman asked. Her voice was steady and low.

Bond couldn’t help the confused expression that slipped across his features. Whatever he had been expecting the woman to say, that had not been it.

“Sitrep, 007. What’s going on?” Bond ignored Q’s voice in his ear.

The woman was younger than most agents Bond came into contact with, with short dark hair pulled back in two tight braids. Her eyes were sharp and bright, the type of eyes that made someone look like trouble, even with the dark circles tattooing her under eyes. She was still and steady, and Bond found himself wondering who was underestimating who.

She looked as though she hadn’t slept in days, but she had that type of calm that came with being very comfortable in dangerous situations.

“I’m afraid I don’t even know who you are.” Bond said, risking a step towards the woman.

It was the wrong move.

She startled, moving quicker than he could counteract. The blanket was ripped from his bed and thrown over him, and he found himself fumbling blind for a moment. When he finally pulled the blanket from over his head, she was already sprinting down the hallway.

"Damn it—Q, keep eyes on her!" Bond yelled, taking off after her. She led him into the stairwell, and he gained ground on her by taking the steps two to three at a time. She burst into the lobby with him only a few meters behind.

He didn’t know what this woman knew or what she had meant, but he wasn’t going to let the only person who seemed to understand why Thompson was dead slip away that easy.

"Can’t get a clear look at her face," Q said. His voice was serious but reassuring somehow. “She knows where the cameras are Bond, she’s dodging me pretty well.”

"Of course she does," Bond said in exasperation.

She made it out onto the street before he did. Her quick steps were beating out his longer stride. She threw herself over a motorbike that had been parked on the side of the street, keys already in the ignition. She was gone before Bond’s feet hit the sidewalk.

"Keep on her, Q," he ordered. Then, he scanned the area quickly and bolted towards his car in the far parking lot. The DB-10 had been recently modified by the ever ingenuitive Q, and Bond hoped it would be fast enough to catch up to what looked like a normal racing motorcycle.

“Bond, we—oh _shite_ —we have a problem.”

“What’s going on Q, tell me you didn’t lose her.” Bond started the car and flew out of the parking space, nearly taking out an old couple who were trying to get to their car. Bond gave a small wave of apology before zipping past them and zooming out onto the road.

“Right at the first light.” Q informed him. “No, I didn’t lose her. But someone is trying to make me lose her.”

Bond skidded around the turn, scratching the side of the car against someone who actually probably had the right of way.

“You’re being hacked?”

“Turn left in—now, turn left! You should be right behind her.” Q raised his voice, his attention clearly divided. Bond quickly followed the direction, his car drifting as it turned. “Someone get me a lock on whoever the hell is daft enough to try and hack me!”

“Q—”

“Straight shot from there, 007.”

“Q, I don’t see her.”

“What do you mean, she should be…” Q trailed off. When he did speak again, his voice was so dangerously calm that even Bond flinched (he could only imagine all of Q branch was collectively shitting themselves). “They scrambled my footage.”

There was a long pause. Bond knew that Q was not the type of man who liked to beat at his own game, and technology was, above all else, Q’s game. Bond slowed his car, knowing that the short-lived chase was over.

The woman was gone. The flash drive was gone. Thompson was gone.


	2. The Visit

Q was in one of his bad moods.

The rest of Q Branch knew better than to mess with their boss when he was stewing over something, especially when that something included the genius Q being outwitted by an unknown hacker, so they flitted about more quietly than normal, every now and again shooting hesitant looks at him as if he were a bomb they were waiting to be set off. Bond seemed to have missed the memo about leaving Q be, however. He’d seen many perils out in the field, and an angry Q was far less frightening than being shot (though a tad bit more intimidating than staring into the barrel of a gun). 

Q was set up at his desk on the slightly raised platform at the front of the room, and his desk was littered with remnants of past and present cases, with returned gear and all manner of tiny tinkering tools spilling out from the metal tray he used in an attempt to organize his mess. It was a damn good thing that Q preferred to do all his paperwork online because a mountain of case files on his desk would have buried the man even further in what was already a rather impressive pile, though Bond didn’t doubt that Q knew exactly where each and every item was hiding in the mess.

Bond swept up to Q’s desk with a passing nod at some of the Q Branch minions who were attempting not to ogle at the 00 in their midst and failing spectacularly. He tried not to feel like an animal in an exhibit, tried not to take it personal. They meant no harm by their curious stares, even if they made Bond the least bit uncomfortable.

Q was grumbling to himself and tinkering about with his latest project, obviously unaware of his surroundings and Bond’s arrival, so Bond cleared his throat audibly, knowing better than to startle his jumpy Quartermaster. Q was easily frightened, and he would often clam up and become unsociable if spooked enough (Bond had learned that lesson the hard way).

Q looked up at the sound, seeming to have forcibly snapped from whatever daze he was in. Bond knew Q was surprised by his appearance, though he hid it well behind a tight smile and a slender finger pushing his glasses up on his nose, conveniently hiding half of his face for that split second of confusion. Q always liked to seem as though he had everything under control—especially around the 00s. Bond understood. Q just wanted to be taken seriously.

More often than not, Bond and the other 00s would allow him to think he was in control of every situation involving them, even as they all quietly thought about Q being controlling in… well, in a different setting, and what Q didn’t know wouldn't hurt him. Bond, like the rest of his fellow agents, was used to a life of pretty things that were hollow and decaying on the inside. It wasn’t selfish for him to long for the company of something truly beautiful, and it wasn’t strange for him to think that Q was maybe the most beautiful man he’d ever met.

The world they were in was deadly, slowly crumbling and falling apart around them, Bond knew, but Q did wear the weight of the world so well for one so young. It was in his nature, to cut down and to shatter when he needed to. He existed to live fast and die young, like the brightest of stars in the night sky. 

And yet…

And yet he was still the man who cried over romantic movies (though he told Bond he’d murder him if he ever told anyone that he’d caught him doing so) and shared his food with both friends and strangers in the office who’d come off a bad mission, who pushed himself to the point of exhaustion so others could sleep, because he never knew when—or how—to stop  _ giving _ .

Bond knew he shouldn’t dwell on it more he could help. He had to remind himself that even stars die. 

Even still, he sometimes had dreams of Q that nearly brought him to tears. He could see him, his smile genuine and his eyes alight, piercingly blue and alive with electricity, a force like no other he’d ever encountered. He felt no fear. His calloused hands in Q’s, a halo of gunfire over his head. His fingertips ran across the skin of his shoulders. Shaking hands on warm skin.

And then he would wake up.

“Are you listening to me, 007?”

Bond gave Q one of his signature smiles, the type he used right before he charmed a woman into giving him what he needed on a mission. Q, to his credit, bristled more than he blushed, but not even he was completely immune to the allure of the 00’s.

“No,” Bond said, circling the desk to lean beside Q. With a huff, Q looked up at Bond from his chair— clearly Q wanted to just be left alone, but Bond had no intention of leaving yet. Far be it from him to be chased off so easily. Q set down whatever strange and ingenious thing he’d been tinkering with. 

“What can I help you with, 007?” Q asked, drawing his hands together before crossing his arms over his chest.

“It wasn’t your fault, Q,” Bond said after a moment. Q’s mouth shut with an audible click, his jaw flexing, as he looked away from Bond’s gaze.

“Like hell, 007.” Q reached forward to grab one of the many ballpoint pens scattered about his desk. He pretended to busy himself with updating the catalogue of tags on a few of the items on his desk, if just to give his hands something to do. “If I had realized a little sooner that I was being hacked—”

“She still would have gotten away. A motorcycle can move through traffic a lot quicker than that brilliant car of yours can,” Bond said. He tried his hardest to sound gentle, but he knew it came out as more of a teasing remark than a soft reminder. Bond was not very good at soft or gentle.

“Leave the flattery for your honey traps.” Q pointed at Bond with his pen, a scowl on his face.

“Besides, she had too far a lead on me.” Bond ignored Q’s snippy tone, knowing full well that he was only lashing out because he was frustrated with himself more than anything else. “Look, Q. There’s nothing we can do now except wait. The sketch I made will come back with something.”

“Of course,” Q agreed, sighing. He leaned back in his chair and rolled his shoulders out. He waved a hand dismissively at Bond. “Did you come here solely to bother me about that, or does this visit have a purpose?”

“Why do you have scars there?” Bond changed the subject; it was less than subtle but effective enough. He caught Q’s wrist in his hand, turning it over to reveal the thin white lines criss-crossing Q’s palm. He felt Q freeze in his grip, though Bond remained conscious of the fact that he would let Q pull away should he choose to. It was always a toss up—some days Q would allow himself to be touched, some days he preferred to keep to himself.

Bond rather liked the days when Q was alright with the touches, even if it was something simple, like Bond clapping him on the back. 

“They’re just scars, Bond, everybody has some.” Q drew in a short breath, tearing his eyes away from Bond’s to stare down at his still-open palm. His voice was stern and dismissive, and Bond almost believed him—almost. Slowly, his fingers curled shut, though he still didn’t pull away.

Bond took his time before letting go. He flipped Q’s wrist over so he could check the simple black watch on his wrist. 

“I’m to be upstairs in five minutes to sign the paperwork from yesterday with M,” Bond said smoothly, finally releasing Q’s wrist and acting as if nothing happened. Q shifted in his seat, sitting up straighter and returning Bond’s calm stare. He went back to fiddling with his pen, even clicking it a few times as he fidgeted.

“Sounds exciting.” Q’s voice was a little softer, but just as strong.

“It’s definitely not.” Bond chuckled. He patted at the breast pocket of his suit before shaking his head, the smile on his face widening. “Forgot my pen. Think M’ll let me out of it?”

Q scoffed.

“He’ll have your ass if you don’t fill out post-mission paperwork again,” Q warned, shaking his head. There was a hint of amusement in his tone, and Bond caught the quirk of Q’s lips that vanished as quick as it came. Q clicked his pen twice more before lifting it up to offer it towards Bond. “Take one of mine.”

Bond was far better at concealing emotions than Q, but even he couldn’t help the smile that slowly crept across his features. There went his Q again—giving, giving, giving. 

Bond reached over to take the pen from Q’s outstretched hand, but Q pulled back at the last second and sent Bond a stern look. “I better get this back, 007.”

“Scared I’m going to steal your pen?” Bond mused out loud, the teasing tone returning to his voice. Q shook his head, but he was smiling with glint in his eye that told Bond that Q was finally in a jesting mood. Q relinquished the pen over to him.

“I’m scared you’re going to break it, actually.”

“I don’t know what you mean, Q.” Bond kept his voice even, feigning innocence while trying not to think about his tendency to not bring back Q Branch inventions in the best of conditions—in fact, he often didn’t bring things issued to him back at all.

Q snorted.

“Go do your job, Bond, before M has both our asses.”


	3. The Mouse

Q Branch was drowned in darkness.

The room was nearly silent, as well. If not for the gentle clicking echoing from Q’s desk and the slender form slumped in his chair, Bond might have even thought it deserted. He shook his head, knocking on the glass door gently to alert his quartermaster of his presence. Q’s head snapped up. He relaxed ever so slightly as he caught sight of Bond, but the tension in his shoulders was still clear.

“Still here, 007?” Q asked offhandedly, leaning back in his chair and stretching his arms up.

“Pot, kettle.” Bond said, crossing the room only to stop right in front of Q’s desk. Q glanced around skittishly, seeming to really take notice of the hour for the first time. It was well past midnight, and the whole building was empty save for the few security guards and sanitary workers who were filtering through the building and, it seemed, Bond and Q.

“Yes, well,” Q trailed off, shaking his head. He crossed his arms over his chest, tilting his head side to side until there was an audible pop and his soft sigh of relaxation. Bond smiled at him, watching as some of the tension in his shoulders melted away. “Come all the way down here to tell me off for staying up past my bedtime?”

Bond chuckled, shaking his head. The smell of Q’s since cooled mug of Earl Grey wafted to his nose, and Bond was struck by the sudden hunger for some take out. One of these days he’d bring Q with him, show off that amazing Indian place a short walk from Bond’s flat, where the owner knew his name and always made sure that Bond received the Friends and Family Discount. He would take him one day, if he could ever pull Q away from that desk of his, that is.

“Actually, I stopped by because I’d been meaning to give you this.” Bond held out his hand, in the palm of which sat the pen that Q had loaned him the other day. It was a nice ballpoint kind, and Bond had made certain he didn’t damage or misplace it, though he had been tempted to stab M with it more than once during the talking to he got for being less than discrete in his latest missions.

“You came all the way down here to return my pen?”

“You told me to make sure I returned it,” Bond said with a shrug. What he didn’t tell Q was that he was using the pen as an excuse to justify why a 00 was in Q Branch when there was no mission to be discussed or equipment to be dished out. In truth… well, in truth he didn’t know why he was bothering to return it or even why the safe return of a pen mattered all this much to him, but he certainly didn’t want to give in to the nagging voice in the back of his head the satisfaction of admitting that he just wanted to see Q’s face, hear his voice, earn one of his smiles.

Q paused, scanning his eyes around the room before letting himself truly focus on Bond. There was a shrewdness about Q, one of his many endearing features, but Bond was one of the few who truly understood that look in his eye right before he would relax and the tension would melt away—Q always seemed ready for an ambush or an attack, even when he was sat at his desk or working around the office. Bond supposed that kind of caution came honestly, as Q had only come into his job as top dog in Q Branch after his predecessor had been killed in the explosion caused by Silva last year. Bond tried not to be offended by the fact that Q seemed to think this visit had some hidden plot behind it; he was just as paranoid, after all.

Q slumped over a second later, all the alertness seeming to fade as he sent Bond a half smile that was more sigh than smirk.

“Thank you, Bond.” Q sounded genuine. 

“Go home, get some rest,” Bond ordered, giving a tense nod. He felt suddenly out of place in this room of blinking lights and empty chairs. Q Branch had never been the most comfortable place to be; oftentimes, he felt like a relic of old when surrounded by all the geniuses with no red dripping from their hands and high tech equipment that would one day replace him (or get him killed). Bond was more of a blunt object, used when things were meant to get messy, but that didn’t mean he like for that fact to be pointed out. Even in the dead of night, he still felt out of place in Q Branch.

Bond, having no idea what else to do or where to carry the conversation, promptly turned on his heel and started on his way out. 

“Likewise, 007,” Q answered, dismissive, already stooping over to go back to work on his laptop.

Bond stopped at the doorway, pulling the glass door open but not yet walking out of it. He gave himself a moment to look over Q who, with his scrunched nose and lips pressed in a hard line, looked very much like he wouldn’t be adhering to Bond’s advice any time soon. 

“Q.”

Q hummed in response, glancing up.

“I’m serious. Go home. Take care of yourself as well as you take care of the rest of us.” 

“Alright,” Q said softly, after a long moment of silence. Bond nodded, satisfied, before pushing the door the rest of the way open stepping out. “007?”

Bond stopped dead in his tracks. He poked his head back in the doorway, steadying his gaze on Q.

“Q?” He said evenly.

“Thank you.”

Bond again did not know how to reply properly (Q seemed to be doing that to him quite a bit), so he gave Q a small nod before turning on his heel and walking straight out of Q Branch, trying to stiffen his upper lip as a smile threatened to spill out onto his face.

* * *

  
Q did not, in fact, go home right away.

He knew that 007 was right—god knows it was a shock that Bond cared— but Q was never the type to do what was best for his health when there was someone else counting on him. 003 had been in the field for 78 hours now, officially 24 hours past when she should have been brought in. He needed to reroute an exit strategy, find a suitable hotel, ensure proper handoff of supplies, and—

Q froze. Had the door just opened? 

He could have sworn he heard the door, even seen it open ever so slightly out of the corner of his eye, but when he snapped his head up to stare it down, the door was closed. He shook his head, trying to chalk it up to the late hour and his jumpy nature. A few moments passed of tense silence. He sighed, leaning back in his chair, rubbing his eyes. He couldn’t go back to work, couldn’t relax, what with his imagination running wild about all the potentials of his situation. 

“007, is that you?” Q called out, if just to fill the suddenly nerve wracking silence with something. There was no response. He stood, grabbing the newly returned pen from the edge of his desk where Bond had left it, though god knows what he’d do with it if there actually was an intruder. Q moved slowly and carefully, trying to soften the sounds of his footfalls. He stepped towards the door, intent on examining it, when he saw another shadow move in the corner of his eye. He whipped around, pen gripped tightly in his hand, but there was no one in that corner. He looked around the room anxiously; there was no one in any corner, or any other part of the room. He even looked under the nearest desks, praying there was nothing and, ultimately, finding nothing.

Q sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. 007 had been right. He should go home and get some rest.

Then, he heard it.

The noise was subtle— a soft intake of breath—but Q’s entire body bristled at the sound, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the pen even harder. His hair stood on end. Ever so slowly, he looked up towards the ceiling in that small corner of the room, hoping and praying that he was mistaken. 

He was not alone.

A hooded figure had wedged themselves high up in the ceiling, between the A/C vent that hung from the ceiling and the wall that was parallel to it. 

Q stumbled, throwing himself backwards towards his desk with little grace but all the speed he could manage. 

The intruder dropped to the floor. They sprang towards Q, reaching out to grab him by the front of his shirt and yanking him down. Q felt his body lurch forward, but he kept himself right side up by catching the edge of the desk nearest to him. The intruder wasn’t fazed and slammed their knee into Q’s chest as he fell forwards towards them. He let out a gasp as the wind was knocked from his lungs. He sank to his knees but caught his breath quick enough.

Q lashed out at the intruder’s legs before they could land another blow, sending them sprawling to the ground nearly on top of him. He braced his back against the leg of the desk behind him and kicked out with his feet, catching the intruder off guard and in the chest. They slammed into the desk across the aisle, clutching their gut. Q used his moment of success to scramble on all fours towards his desk. If he could just reach his cellphone—

The intruder caught him by the ankle and yanked him back, causing Q to lose his balance and slam face first into the ground, losing the pen still gripped in his hand in the process. His nose lit up with a flare of hot pain, and something warm enough to be blood trickled down on to his upper lip. He rolled on to his back, gasping, trying to meet his attacker head on. 

The intruder attempted to sidestep him and get to his desk, but Q had a little fight in him, yet. He felt around on the ground for the pen he’d dropped, grabbing it just in time to reach up and jab it into their upper left leg. The intruder dropped to their knee, grunting, and Q launched himself at them, again. The sheer force of his body weight was enough to send both of them tumbling to the floor in a mess of flailing limbs. 

His attacker rolled on to the top of him, trying to pin down his hands with their knees. Somewhere in the scuffle, their hood must have fallen back because now Q was looking up into the eyes of a young woman with long hair pulled back into a messy braid. The woman’s eyes were sharp as she fought to overpower Q, her hands reaching for something above his head. 

Q knew her. Well, maybe not, but he knew her face. Bond was a talented artist when he needed to be and he’d nailed the sharper features of this woman’s face in his sketch of her from the botched handoff in Chile a week ago. What he left out in his sketch was the cold fire behind her eyes, a look that chilled Q to the bones.

He felt something cool and smooth touch his neck, and a heavy knot settled in the pit of his stomach as he realized she was trying to get his computer cord wrapped around his throat. He fought with a new animosity, fear overtaking his ability to think straight. He struggled, trying to shake her off the top of him, but her knees dug deep into his shoulders, effectively pinning him beneath her weight. The woman pulled harder on the cord, and Q came to the sickening realization that she’d managed to get it around his neck as he’d been trying to fight her off.

She pulled the cord taut. 

Q’s pulse quickened, and he jerked his whole body back in an attempt to get away. The tightness of the wire around his neck, digging into his skin hard enough to leave bruises, would have hurt on its own, but the added lack of oxygen was what he feared the most. It felt as if he was trying to breathe sandpaper, each attempt to bring in air met with short, halting gasps. His vision swam. His back arched unnaturally. He wrenched one hand free, slapping at the woman’s face before clawing at his throat, desperate for air.

Rapid breaths. Rapid, shallow breaths. The world spun in circles—he couldn’t breathe. He writhed and tried to scream, but no noise came out. There was blood smearing down his face and tears slipping from his eyes; he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t, he couldn’t, he couldn’t. 

Then, his vision went dark, and he fell limp.

And just like that, he could breathe again. He felt the weight of the woman leave his chest and the cord relax around his neck. He could do nothing other than lay there, coughing and spluttering, blood trickling down his face from his nose.

“You told me this place would be empty, Click.”

The voice caught him off guard. He strained to listen, afraid to move too much without his ability to see straight fully returned to him. Black dots still danced in his eyes, like the static from the telly had somehow seeped into his brain. 

“Hurry up and do what you need to do, I’ve got limited time here.” 

Q guessed she was talking to someone via earwig. It wasn’t hard to put together, after all. She was using his computer, he thought. A smugness warmed his stomach as he mused to himself that she’d never be able to hack him. The warmth immediately turned to ice in his veins as he realized he’d left his computer on and unlocked when he’d gone to check the door. He would have cursed, had he the breath and strength to speak.

“Yeah, I know. Lecture me later, Click. You find it?”

Q was just regaining feeling in his extremities when a shot rang out. Finally, security had figured out that an intruder was here. They’d come to rescue him—

Another shot whizzed by, shattering into the leg of the desk beside him. 

He quickly rolled over and pushed himself onto his knees, hesitant to stand, but having no other option than to find cover. He gasped in air for a moment, coughing as his vision swam, before deciding it would be safer to crawl—dignity be damned. If he could just make it to his desk—

Another shot rang out, this time too close for comfort, as he could feel the heat of the bullet fly past his arm. Q cursed, hastening his pace. 

He nearly tumbled backwards when an arm shot out from under his desk, catching him by the front of his shirt and pulling him forwards into a small spot of coverage. His blood ran cold when he saw those sharp eyes again, and he couldn’t decide what was worse: ducking and covering with the woman who just strangled him or being left to his own devices to attempt to evade whoever the hell was shooting at them. 

“I'm going to commit your murder!” The woman snapped. Q leaned away from her, but she waved a hand at him dismissively and pointed to her ear. So she was talking to her conspirator then. He vaguely remembered her calling them Click, though that was a horribly silly name. “Who’s shooting?”

Q chanced a look while the woman was arguing with whoever was running point on her comms, and noticed that the shooter, a rather broad, bald man with a tracksuit on, was forgoing all formalities and charging towards the desk.

“Russians?” The woman spat, as if she were insulted, pulling a gun out from where it must have been holstered under her jacket. She fired off a shot, two, and Q was left wondering why she hadn’t just shot _him_ in the first place. He was in her way, clearly and— “Did you get that info downloaded? Good. Go dark.”

The woman pulled the earwig from her ear and crushed it beneath her boot. She leaned out from cover again, setting up a shot, and Q noticed the chain of the necklace that slipped out from her shirt as she did so—on that chain was a flash drive.

He didn’t have time to think about that revelation, as the whole desk was wrenched from the floor and shoved back into Q and the woman. Q cursed again as his belongings rained over his head and the desk slammed into his body. The woman beside him seemed in better shape, though a sharper tool must have scratched her cheek as it fell because a thin line of red was drawn from the corner of her lip to her ear.

The shooter, apparently a Russian operative, rounded the mess and pointed his gun at Q, but the woman sprang up from the ground and tackled him, sending both of their guns scattering across the room. 

Q knew security was on its way. They’d had to have set off literally all of the alarms by now after the sound of gunfire had begun echoing through the facilities. He just had to wait and it’d all be sorted. He just had to—

The woman cried out in pain, though her scream quickly morphed into a growl of sorts. She’d been pinned down by the Russian, who was holding a knife above her head. She had her hands on his wrists, pushing away as he pushed down and the knife inched closer to her throat. 

Q dove for one of the guns, but as soon as his hands connected with the cold metal he froze. He was proficient in the use of firearms, of course, but he’d never shot a living being before. His training had never prepared him for taking a life, and the voice in his head returned, whispering that he couldn’t do it, he wouldn’t be able to pull the trigger. 

Then, a smaller voice chimed in. Q didn’t want to think too hard about why it sounded like Bond or why it calmed him.

_Squeeze the trigger._ It told him. _Try not to close your eyes._

The woman cried out again, the knife dangerously close to her throat. Q didn’t stop to think this time. He aimed the gun at the man. He squeezed the trigger. He closed his eyes.

  
  



	4. The Rogue

He should have been there. 

The guilt that welled up inside of him spilled out into his features, taking form as a barely controlled rage that pulled his brows together and curled his upper lip. He should have been there to protect Q. If he’d stayed a little longer, he would have been there when all hell broke loose. Bond scowled at himself; _he_ _should have_ _been there_.

The footage M showed him from the incident had been… sickening.

Bond had felt a small surge of pride when he saw Q stab the woman in the leg with the pen he was suddenly thankful he’d returned promptly, but his mouth went dry and his heart skipped a beat when he saw Q on the ground, writhing against the woman as she choked him with his own computer cord. He felt that he could only breathe again when he saw the woman step away from Q, but his chest again felt heavy as he saw the man gasping on the ground, looking crumpled and broken. 

Despite it all, the worst part to watch had been Q shooting the Russian operative a half moment before security had flooded into the room.

It was not just Q’s bloody hands and trembling fingers that Bond was forced to watch in crystal clear HD. It was not just the way Bond’s stomach ached and his forehead began to sweat at the sight. He saw the pain in Q’s eyes, clear as day. He could tell that Q was gripping the gun like a lifeline, just by the way his knuckles were turning a deathly white against the already pale shade of his skin (an almost sickly pale in the lowlights, Bond noted). Q had then wiped at his face, swiping at tears that were yet to fall, accidentally dragging blood from his broken nose across his cheek with shaking fingers. 

When Bond was much younger, he had long dreamed of meeting an angel, all soft hair and soft eyes and soft halo glowing gold, but Q looked closer to holy in that moment than anything he’d read about or pictured, even if there was no soft left in his gunfire halo and fuel-scorched wings.

There was so much light living deep inside him, deep as a knife wedged in his gut.

It rattled Bond’s bones.

Bond, after hearing the retelling of the incident from Moneypenny and watching the footage from the security cameras, had asked M allow him to run point on questioning the woman who they’d managed to take into custody. He surprised even himself when his voice was hard and impassive, calm despite the fire burning in his stomach. M, who also seemed to be of a vengeful mind, had agreed. 

It was a short walk from M’s office to the hall where temporary prisoners were kept. Standing at the glass doors when he arrived was none other than Q, tapping away on a tablet and looking past the one way mirrored glass at the woman who sat inside the small room, her hands cuffed to a rod in the center of the table.

“Bond,” Q said with a curt nod, upon noticing his arrival. Many years of training allowed Bond to catch the nearly imperceptible flinch that crossed his face as he moved his head. He gestured to the woman behind the glass, the woman he’d seen just a week or so ago in Chile. “Meet Antoinette McCarrow, an American operative that, alongside her team, went rogue and dropped off the face of the Earth.”

Bond paused only for a moment. He didn’t want to push Q into talking about the events of the previous night, though he didn’t know how long he could pretend like Q wasn’t hurting. It was written all over his face—his nose taped and reset, shoulders stiff, and smile tight. Bond decided to shut up and let Q lead, but he felt his whole body tense as he looked over a clearly still shaken Q. 

Q wore a high necked turtle neck that covered most of his throat, though Bond could imagine the very visible damage that lay beneath. The bags under his eyes gave away the fact that Q likely hadn’t slept, but Bond understood why that might have been difficult. Bond tried not to think about the turmoil that must be going on in Q’s brain. He didn’t dare try and reach out to touch Q, knowing today would not be a day that it would be received well.

“Rogue? Why?” Bond could play along. It was time to think about the mission at hand, not the catastrophic results of last night. Q must have been in agreement because he rattled on without very much push at all from Bond.

“That’s a very good question. It seems her and three other agents decided to stage an attack on their government, killing twelve and injuring thirty six after planting a bomb in the Pentagon a month ago.”

Bond looked over at the woman, shock and confusion vying for his attention as his eyebrows scrunched together. He had so recently dealt with rogue agents, specifically Silva last year, and this woman did not strike him as the psychotic and betraying type. He did suppose, though, that any agent could be pushed to sacrifice their country if someone knew the right buttons to press.

He needed to find which buttons to press to get answers.

“Three others? Is she still working with her team, do we know?” Bond knew better than most that partners in the field could be leveraged against you.

“Last night I heard her talking to someone she called Click via earwig. I assume that’s her team’s tech support, a woman named Erin Reyez.” Q turned his tablet around to show Bond a passport photo for another young woman who had dark skin and short hair. He swiped past the photo, instead showing a new one with two headshots—the first being that of a white man with a charming smile and the second was of a skinny Asian man who was scowling at the camera. “The other two on her team, Thomas Moore and Marcus Humphrey, are dead. Moore was killed when local police took him and Humphrey into custody, and Humphrey was shot later that day when he went for a guard’s gun at the police station.”

Bond could imagine it. Any agent bold enough to bomb a government building was also likely bold enough to try to pull a fast one on the local PD. Well, bold or perhaps stupid enough, that is.

“Any video of either of those deaths?”

“Video… what for?” Q asked in a small, scandalized voice, but he was already typing away at his tablet so Bond assumed he was doing what was asked of him. Another flush of red poked out from beneath Q’s turtle neck, and Bond had to tuck his hands into his pockets to stop himself from tugging it down any further to investigate the results of what he should have been around to protect Q from.

“If she went rogue _with_ her team, it’s likely they were all close. I can use that against her when I go in there,” Bond explained, turning his attention once again to the woman beyond the glass who was starting to look very, very bored.

“I don’t know if—” Q shifted again, and even more bruising was exposed along his neck.

Bond couldn’t help himself. He reached up carefully, trying to steady the slight tremor in his fingers, before gently tugging Q’s collar down, careful not to pull so hard on the fabric that it hurt him. Q froze under his touch. The bruises that decorated his neck were an angry red against the pale of his skin, dotted in splotches around his throat, as if it were a circlet blooming with abstract, abhorrent roses.

“It’s nothing, Bond.” Q barely breathed.

“It certainly doesn’t look like nothing,” Bond said, letting go of Q’s collar. His gaze shifted from intently analyzing his wound to meeting Q’s gaze with hard eyes. Q scoffed at him, though Bond could tell he was trying to hide pain behind his rigid aloofness.

“I seem to recall more than a few times in which you survived far worse,” Q pointed out, looking pointedly at Bond. He reached up and grabbed Bond’s arm by the wrist, unhooking him from his shirt collar and pulling his hand away from his body. 

Bond should have known Q wouldn’t be comfortable with the touches today, but he didn’t really care. He focused on the bruises staring angrily at him from Q’s throat until Q pulled his shirt collar back up to cover them. 

“That doesn’t give anyone else permission to hurt you,” Bond said gruffly. 

“I signed up for this, same as you.” Q scoffed, his eyes hard. His face softened after a moment, however, and his gaze returned to the woman, Antoinette, behind the glass. His voice lowered, a whisper that was both relieved and puzzled. “Besides, she didn’t want to kill me.”

“What makes you so sure?” Bond followed Q’s eyes, turning to stare at the American again. The strong cut of her jaw and bitter expression on her face was off putting enough, but Bond knew well enough how to spot someone who shared in his training. He’d seen it in Chile and he saw it in the security footage. She was well versed in the art of being a blunt object, a hand to pull a trigger, and he could not imagine that she would hesitate to put a bullet in Q if she needed to.

“She tried to sneak past me first, then only incapacitated me when she could have killed me just as quick,” Q said. 

Bond contemplated Q’s point quietly, understanding why it puzzled him. It wasn’t efficient to leave a witness alive, nor was it common practice to then save said witnesses’ life when another opponent decided to join in. Still, he didn’t buy it.

“She suffocated you.” 

“And I stabbed her, so I dare say we’re even.” There was a new levity to Q’s voice, even perhaps a small sense of pride.

“That’s not at all how that works,” Bond said, but he couldn’t hold in his chuckle. Leaning against the wall, he looked back to Q.

“It works how I decide it does. Besides, aren’t you meant to be interrogating her, not me?” Q asked, once again tapping away at that tablet of his. Bond let himself stare for a moment, observing the line of Q’s jaw, the slight smile ghosting his lips, the way his eyes seemed to be alive with the same electricity that was beneath his fingertips. 

It was a goddamn curse to have to work with such a beautiful man. 

The 00s even had a betting pool going on who would be able to get into Q’s pants the fastest, with most of the money on 005 or 009, who were equally unabashed in their flirting in both the field and the office. It was moments like these, though, that ate away at Bond—Q was far too good for any of them, and he was worth scores more than a one night stand, no matter how good he knew both 005 and 009 could be in bed. 

Bond took in a long breath before he spoke.

“How are you, Q?” 

Q startled at that, if only just. His eyes snapped to Bond, and his mouth shut with an audible click. He was always the one checking up on others, Bond supposed, so it seemed almost fitting that Q reacted like it was a foreign concept to be the one that everyone was checking in on. His hand twitched before he reached up to gently rub his neck, suddenly refusing to meet Bond’s gaze at all.

“I’ll heal. It’s not near as bad as it looks,” he said.

“I’m not just talking about the bruises.” Bond knew he was prodding. He knew he should stop. He couldn’t. That image of Q’s shaking hands holding the gun like a prayer was seared into his mind, and he knew what emotions came with your first kill.

“Ah. Yes, that whole shooting a Russian spy thing,” Q said, but his smile was forced and his voice sounded tighter, like his chest was constricting. “It was necessary.”

Bond shook his head.

“Doesn’t make it any easier.”

“No, it doesn’t.” Q hummed. He glanced over Bond curiously. Bond wondered what he was looking for and worried for what he might find. Q was fairly decent at reading people (though not nearly as good as Bond) and, for some reason, the thought of his judgement weighed on him. Bond was trying his hardest to be kind, and he knew it didn’t always come out perfectly polished. It was only when he was least genuine that he could be suave; he lost all ability to be charismatic when it came to those he truly cared about.

Whatever Q saw must have only piqued his curiosity further because he leaned back on his heels and pursed his lips. Bond tried not to think about it. 

Q shook his head after a long moment of silence, before turning to where his messenger bag was propped up on the table beside him. He pulled a case file out from inside, and Bond assumed it must be filled with everything they had on Antoinette thus far. He offered it to Bond. “Go, do your job, Bond.”

  
  


Bond reached for the file, his fingers accidentally brushing against Q’s for a fraction of a second. Their eyes met for the briefest of moments, before Bond turned on his heel and stalked into the interrogation room, not bothering to slow the door that slammed behind him.

Now, it was just him and the American.

Her eyes followed him as he walked to the table she was chained to and sat opposite of her. She snapped to attention, her back straightening, and Bond made a mental note to check if she had served in the military before finding herself in the services of the CIA. She was terribly young, so he doubted it. Even still, Bond had been fresh out of school when he’d enlisted, and barely into his thirty’s when he’d become a 00. 

“I didn’t kill him,” the woman said dryly, echoing what he’d said to her back in Chile. It was almost comedic, but Bond harbored far too much anger at her for attacking Q to find her even remotely amusing at that time.

“Do you mean my colleague?” He fought to keep his tone light.

“Actually, I meant the Russian, but him too,” she said, leaning back. A flicker of… _something_ crossed her face when he mentioned Q. Bond could almost call it remorse. 

“And why is it that you didn’t, Ms. Antoinette McCarrow?” Bond asked, opening the file in front of him and thumbing through a page or two. 

“Oh, please.” She snorted. “Only my mother calls me Antoinette.”

“And what should I call you then?” Bond asked, lifting up the page on her recent medical reports to find the passport photos for her and her team readily available for him to use to his advantage.

“My friends call me Mouse. You may not call me anything,” she joked, the bite not present behind her bark.

Bond let the paper fall back into place atop the photos, looking up at her with an eyebrow raised.

“Mouse?” He asked incredulously. He couldn’t help himself; it was a ridiculous name.

“Yeah, codenames are seldom all that creative. I mean, you’re a fucking number, 007.” She leaned forward, clasping her hands in front of her and letting her elbows rest on the table. The chain on her restraints clinked as she moved, and Bond could tell there was a little more venom behind her words this time.

She knew him, then. 

He supposed it wasn’t outlandish. He had, after all, made a sketch of her to the best of his ability—one Q had so thoughtfully included in the file he’d given Bond—in an attempt to track her down. It wasn’t overwhelmingly difficult to believe that she’d looked him up as well. 

He’d need to remember to ask her what she knew about Thompson when he got the chance. That whole situation still bothered him. Thompson had not told him that another agent had even been there, he still had no idea who’d killed him, and now, if he had the order of events right in his head, he knew that Mouse had been in Chile only around two weeks after the Pentagon explosion she supposedly had helped cause. Surely that meant Thompson would have been trying to bring her in? He wondered why she’d willingly searched for him, and how she had stumbled into his room, where Thompson had just so happened to have been murdered.

He cleared his throat. He needed to focus.

“What did you download off of our computers?” He asked, leaning back in his chair, resting one arm on the backrest.

“Intel.” She smiled, but it was cold.

“Intel on what?” He could play her game. He didn’t have anything lined up on his schedule that he actually cared to do, and he could play good cop, bad cop with her for hours if need be. He knew what it would take to break her training, and he was willing to go great lengths. 

She made it personal when she had broken into his building and attacked his quartermaster.

“None of your business,” she chirped, her voice sing-songy even as her expression hardened.

“Neither was it any of yours, if you had to steal it,” he pointed out. She cocked a brow at that, tilting her head to the side to cede his point. She was silent for several breaths, and her eyes focused on a point just past Bond. He let her think about her response; he wasn’t in any rush.

“Look, you’re getting into something you _really_ don’t understand. Hell, I barely understand it myself.” Her voice was lower, quieter, and he realized that she was checking the security cameras with expertly concealed anxiety. He decided to apply a little more pressure.

“Yes, there aren’t many how-to books for betraying your government, are there?” 

Her eyes flashed dangerously, and she exhaled audibly through her nose. Her posture was going rigid again, even as he could see her fighting to retain her nonchalant attitude. 

“My government betrayed me first,” Mouse said, her voice as soft as that of her namesake.

“So you bombed it?” He pressed harder. He knew he was risking forcing her to shut down completely if he made her feel too much like an animal backed into the corner, but he had a feeling he could get somewhere.

“No,” she said firmly, stealing another glance at the security camera in the corner of the room before steadying her gaze in Bond and leaning forward, as if getting ready to share a secret. She spoke in barely anything more than a whisper. “Although someone would very much like you to think we did.”

“You didn’t bomb the Pentagon?” He gave her a look that spoke for itself: he didn’t believe her at all. 

“No.”

So that was the angle she was going to play. She wasn’t going to admit any guilt. While unlikely to work, Bond respected her commitment to the lie. Unfortunately, that meant that he would have to push a little harder. He knew it was time to leverage something more personal.

“And I suppose your friend Humphrey also didn’t try to steal a gun off a policeman?” He slid the photo of Humphrey out from the file and placed it on the table in front of Mouse. Her expression melted, and her small hand shook ever so slightly as she lifted the photo up to stare into the dead man’s eyes. 

“No, he definitely tried that,” she said, the humor returning to voice truer this time as she reminisced. Her eyes quickly darkened however, and she put the photo back down with a deliberateness to her actions. She tore her eyes away from the photo and stared back up at Bond. “Humphrey was an idiot.”

“I see.” He didn’t.

The door swung open, and M’s head poked into the room (when had he joined the observation room?). 

“Bond, the American liaison is here. They’re respectfully requesting that further questioning be left to American authorities.” He said sharply, and Bond knew that the Americans likely didn’t want Mouse to expose anything about their agency without a lawyer to supervise. 

He rose, replacing the photo in his file before taping the case file on the desk to even out the papers within. He nodded at the American.

“Good day.” 

Her hand shot up, moving faster and farther than they realistically should have been able to in the cuffs. She snagged the edge of his sleeve, now standing as well. 

“My flash drive, your Quartermaster has it. It would be a shame if it got lost in transit to America,” she said, a new desperation in her voice that made Bond pause. He had no idea what she was playing at, but he did remember Moneypenny mentioning that Mouse’s flash drive had been taken off her when she’d been thrown into a holding cell.

“Bond,” M said loudly.

“Thompson knew.” Mouse’s voice was barely above a whisper, and Bond was sure that he was the only one able to hear. He stilled at the mention of Thompson, meeting her gaze. “It’s what he wanted to tell you. They killed him, like they killed Humphrey and Moore, like they’re going to kill me.”

“Bond.” M was getting frustrated.

Mouse let go of his sleeve, slowly sliding back into her seat. Bond stared down at her, unmoving, before coming back to his senses. He backed towards the door, holding her gaze as a quizzical expression overtook his features. Finally, he nodded, ever so slightly. 

“Have a nice day, Mouse.”


	5. The Video

There was a desperation in her eyes that he recognized. 

Bond waited at the glass doors for a moment longer than he really needed to. He watched as the American agents escorted Mouse, who looked more than a little like a caged animal tensing up before it lashed out, out of the small interrogation and into the elevators. 

“Don’t do anything stupid, 007,” M said from beside him, his voice low enough so as to not carry all the way to the Americans.

Bond was silent for a moment, keeping eye contact with Mouse as the elevator doors slipped shut, and that gnawing in him, be it doubt or curiosity, flared up again, eating away at the pit in his stomach. 

Then, Mouse was gone, and Bond stiffened.

“Of course, sir,” he said finally. 

M sighed, pinching his nose. Bond tried not to smile, but he did so enjoy being an annoyance, especially when he was being one to M. It wasn’t Bond’s fault that M always reacted in such a way that only served to encourage him to be more of a thorn in his side. 

“007, I mean it. They’re transferring her to the embassy. We’re washing our hands of this whole situation.” M sounded tired, more so than usual. He’d been running MI6 for almost a year now, and the toll it had taken on him had been both emotional and physical, the latter of which etched his face in hard lines that never seemed to go away and tired eyes that made him look ten years older than he was. 

“Yes, sir,” he said, his voice dripping with its normal faux reverence. In this instance, however, Bond did at least try to come across more sincere than he really was. 

M shot him a look of warning, pinching the bridge of his nose again. He rubbed his eyes and shook his head.

Slowly, M turned his gaze back to the glass through which he had gazed upon Mouse only minutes before. He was deep in thought, Bond could tell. It was bothering him, too, then.

With a silent nod at M, Bond excused himself.

The Americans had always been hush-hush, but something felt different this time. And, Bond may have been the only one to hear Mouse’s plea, but that didn’t mean that he’d been the only one to see the look in her eye. She’d been desperate; her outward façade had slipped, if only for a moment, and she’d looked so young—too young. She’d been afraid, and M had seen it, too.

Something was amiss.

Bond remained deep in thought for the entire walk to Q Branch, though it was a relatively short one. He hadn’t seen Q when he’d been unceremoniously ushered out of the interrogation, meaning the man had slipped off at some point during the conversation. Bond knew where he would be, of course; it wasn’t hard to predict the man’s movements when he practically lived at his desk.

As per usual, when Bond swung the door open to Q Branch, he immediately caught sight of Q, brows furrowed and lips pulled into a thin line, looking far too young, himself, as he tapped away at his computer. He was standing, stooped over his work, but something in his posture was more rigid. 

First M, and now Q. Bond supposed he should be glad that he wasn’t the only one being bothered by this whole situation.

Bond moved past the other Q Branch minions (they were staring, per usual) and stepped up beside Q’s desk. He moved close enough to him that he could speak softly and still be heard. 

“Q, you wouldn’t happen to have that flash drive of hers, would you?” He asked slowly, keeping his tone light besides the obvious quiet of his voice.

“Yes, I have it.”

  
  


Q didn’t even look up. Instead, he gestured to his laptop. Plugged into the side of his personal laptop was the black flash drive, the gold chain upon which it was hooked left pooling on the table beside it. Bond found it strange that Q had not hooked it up to his standard issue, MI6 approved computer, which was also at his desk, but he supposed that Q knew as well as he that they had been ordered to stand down on this case.

“How quickly could you access it’s contents?”

“I’m already on it, 007,” Q said in a low voice, tapping away at his laptop with a quiet ease. 

“Fantastic,” Bond said, biting back his remark to hurry up. He tried not to sound too impatient, but he stood just as rigid as Q—though far more awkward and with far less to do. It irked him in moments like these, moments where he could do nothing but wait, even while he knew that he would not have to wait very long.

“Aha! I’m in,” Q said. He turned his laptop slightly, giving Bond a clearer view of the screen. Bond huddled in closer to Q so as to better see and tried not to think about how damn good the man’s cologne—bergamot notes, like his tea—smelled, nor about how nice it felt to be near him. He tried even harder not to think about the bruises that were decorating the man’s throat or how badly Bond wanted to reach out and touch them again. 

A plethora of files and folders popped up on screen, distracting Bond for the most part. Bond was more than used to staring at screens full of information, it came with the job, but this flash drive was all around chaos. 

“It’s a mess,” he noted aloud.

“Yes, but an organized one,” Q said, his voice distant. He must have been deep in thought. Bond looked over at Q, whose eyes were scanning across the screen in tandem with his cursor. “There’s a long list of mission reports, video logs, research, and… there’s an unnamed file here.”

Q shared a glance with Bond. By the looks of his wary expression, Q also shared the feeling of a pit settling deep in the stomach—a sickly anticipation.

“Open it,” Bond said after a moment, nodding his head once in certainty. Q obliged, and he started clicking at the keyboard once more. The folder remained unopened, however, and Bond looked back up at him slowly. “Q?”

“Trying. It’s got some variation of a lock on it.” Q didn’t meet his gaze, instead focusing his attention on the rush of code appearing before his eyes.

“Some variation?” Bond asked, though he doubted he would understand the answer. 

“It’s highly stylized. It’ll take me a minute to—got it.”

Bond had only a half second to marvel at the man’s skill before a video log popped up on to the screen. In the video, sitting at a desk in a dark room with an even darker expression on her face, was Mouse. She looked tired and vulnerable, more so than Bond had witnessed thus far. The video was dated at around a month ago, two days after the explosion in the Pentagon.

“Thompson, if you’re seeing this, I’m dead or incarcerated,” started the recording. There was no more fear in that voice, just a tired resignation to the cold reality of her situation. Bond sighed heavily.

“She was telling the truth,” he muttered, leaning back into his heels.

“Telling the truth about what?” Q asked, though Bond couldn’t answer before Mouse’s recording started up again.

“On my drive, you’ll find a copy of everything we’ve found on the bomb from this week. We haven’t got much, but we are sure of one thing: we’re being set up by someone on the inside.” She tapped at her chest, where Bond assumed the flash drive was hidden beneath her shirt. He could only just see the gold chain, peeking out from beneath her shirt collar, that was now collapsed on the table beside the laptop.

“She told me Thompson knew and that he was killed because of it,” Bond said, keeping his eyes down even as Q’s snapped to look at him. This was not good news, he knew, and he didn’t want to deal with the fallout of actions he was yet to commit. Q, to his credit, seemed to understand in a heartbeat what Bond was only just starting to plan himself.

“Someone on the— is she saying what I think she’s saying?” He asked, his voice small, as he paused the video. He was clearly waiting for a proper answer, and Bond could no longer avoid meeting his questioning look. Bond tried not to focus on him too much—bergamot still lingered in the air—and simply nodded. Q let out a low whistle. “I suppose I was right, then. She really didn’t want to hurt me.”

“I think she was fine with hurting you, just not killing you,” Bond said, choking down a snort, “before you so wonderfully proved that the pen is indeed mightier than the sword.”

Q flushed at that, breaking the gaze and turning his head back to the laptop. His ears reddened at the compliment, and Bond found himself even more amused. He enjoyed the effect his words seemed to have on the quartermaster. 

“Yes, well—”

“Bond, we have a problem.” The voice caught them both by surprise, and Q slammed his laptop shut. M was rushing into Q Branch, his face pulled into a rather unattractive and sour expression. He stopped just short of the raised platform atop which sat Q’s desk, and his eyes were hard as he stared up at Bond. “The American slipped security during the transfer.”

Bond wasn’t expecting _that._

“Slipped the—how the bloody hell has that happened?” He asked, already straightening, preparing to set out after the girl who never seemed to stop running.

“Americans are sloppy, that’s how,” M said, rubbing his temple. 

He was right. Perhaps, Bond really should have expected this.

“Time for me to do something stupid, then, sir?” He smiled, but it was tense. He was itching to move, to go after Mouse with permission or without, but he knew that M wouldn’t have come all the way down to Q Branch to find him if he hadn’t planned to send him out into the field after her. 

Bond paused for a moment. How exactly did M know that he would be in Q Branch? He hadn’t told M, nor anyone he passed on the way. He rather hoped that he wasn’t becoming too terribly predictable. Even if he was, he blamed Q—the man had all of the 00s wrapped around his finger without even realizing.

“It’s what you do best, after all,” M said, and Bond filed those thoughts away to analyze at a different time. M crossed his arms, his voice hardening from something akin to joking into the voice of a weathered leader who was far more than accustomed to giving orders. “She’s on foot, headed south from the west entrance.”

“Q,” Bond said, turning to him, but Q had already caught Bond’s train of thought. Of course, he did.

“Earwig, end of the table. I’m right with you, 007.” Q nodded sharply. Bond quickly nabbed the little device, popping it into his ear snuggly enough that he didn’t fear losing it.

“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” he said with a wink, before he started in a run out of Q Branch. He turned the hall and burst into the stairwell, where he took the stairs, two at a time, up to the ground floor. He pushed past a few people in the MI6 lobby, throwing a mock salute at 003, who gave him a knowing look as she limped out of Medical and into the buildings lobby. He supposed she’d just arrived back from a mission; he’d have to remember to say hello when he got back.

He quickly shoved the doors to the west entrance open, taking off to the south down the road running adjacent to the tall glass building. 

“Alright, Q. Give me something,” he said. He never liked to sprint blindly, in any direction.

“She must be back in contact with her tech expert, Click. She’s hiding from the cameras pretty well.” Q’s voice crackled to life in his ear, and Bond fought the instinct to reach up and touch the device.

“No lock on location then?” He asked, still running as fast as his legs would carry him down the street Mouse had last been seen on. He moved to cross the road, narrowly missing getting hit by a car whose driver was not expecting a pedestrian to come barreling across the street at full speed. Bond slid over the hood to avoid being slowed down, and he ignored the indignant shouts of the driver as he carried on his way.

“Give us a moment. Rush hour traffic is difficult to navigate,” Q said. Bond scoffed.

“You’re telling me.” 

“Aha! She’s heading South-West, towards the Thames,” Q said, and Bond adjusted his course accordingly. He knew this city like the back of his hand at this point. He did not believe Mouse had that same advantage.

“How far?” He asked, taking what he hoped would be a short cut through an uncrowded alleyway.

“She’s not exactly sprinting, it looks like she’s trying to blend—” Q’s voice cut out. Bond didn’t let it faze him, but he hoped that the communication hadn’t been tampered with.

“Q?” He checked, emerging onto the sidewalk that ran parallel to the Thames. He continued along it, jogging through the crowd of tourists and Londoners with the ease of a man who’d worked around crowds more than a few times before.

“She wants you to catch up.” Q’s voice was softer as it came back to life in his ear.

“What?” He asked, only half paying attention as his eyes scanned the crowds bustling about in front of him. He had thrown discreteness to the wind as he moved swiftly along the sidewalk.

“She winked at the camera, Bond,” Q elaborated. “She knows we’re on her tail, and she’s not exactly hiding.”

“How far, Q?” Bond asked again, still searching for that needle in the haystack. Mouse had been pretty enough, but her features were quite plain and her clothing was dark—she looked like every other bloody person in England. It made finding her in a crowd rather difficult.

“Twenty paves ahead, to your left.”

Bond snapped his eyes to where Q directed, slowing his pace to a jog. He made eye contact with Mouse, who gave him a smile before turning over her shoulder and taking off in a sprint down the sidewalk. 

“I see her.” Bond was after her like a shot.

“Bond,” Q said. He sounded distant, like he had before, though less distracted. Bond could only hum in response as he picked up his pace. Q spoke again, just as quiet but far more firm than he’d been before. “Be careful.”

“On it.” Bond attempted to sound sincere, but he was well aware that his natural tone of voice seemed to drop with dry sarcasm. He remained around thirty meters back from Mouse, who moved with all the agility that Bond had boasted of in his younger days. “Christ, she’s fast. Are you sure she wants to get caught?”

“I’d be more concerned about where she’s leading you,” Q said darkly. Bond didn’t give his words too much weight. He already knew Mouse had been trying to get him to follow her. She’d been pleased to see him, after all. 

He kept his eyes on her as they crossed into a more tourist-packed area. He though for sure he’d gain ground as the crowd thickened around a few benches that looked out over the river and effectively cut off Mouse’s route, but she stepped up onto the first bench, one foot planting on the seat and then the other on the back of the bench, and then launched herself onto the second one. Bond couldn’t help but be impressed as her feet landed on the backrest of the second bench, her knees bent to help her balance, before she hopped down gracefully and kept moving.

“What the—what is she doing?” He asked, more to himself than anything.

“I believe the kids these days call that parkour,” Q said, his voice teasing. Bond rolled his eyes, but he was smiling. He vaulted the first bench with a fair amount of ease, and used his momentum to carry him over the second one even quicker. It was less impressive-looking than the show Mouse had put on but just as efficient.

“Q, do me a favor and shut up,” Bond said back. 

He tried to move past the crowds but they only seemed to get thicker, and he soon lost Mouse in a sea of other people. She was short and unassuming enough to slip right into the crowds, and Bond cursed. “Alright, I lied. Don’t shut up.”

“Miss me, Bond?” Q purred, but he was already typing away at his computer if the sounds of his clicking keyboard was anything to go by. Bond slowed to a walk, and he resorted to shoving past people without so much as a hurried apology as he frantically scanned the crowd for the American.

“I’ve lost her in the crowd,” Bond said, but he couldn’t help the smile that slipped onto his face at Q’s tone. It was franky ridiculous that he could speak in such a manner and still have absolutely no idea what it did to all of the 00s, most especially Bond. 

“One second.” Q was typing much faster now, and the tapping was much clearer. Bond kept his head on a swivel, but he could not see any sign of Mouse. He knew that, if she had similar training to him, he would need Q’s expertise and a fair bit of luck to find her in a mess such as this.

“Q,” Bond said, fearing that, with each second that ticked by, Mouse was getting further and further away.

“Give us a moment,” Q muttered, before he made a noise of triumph. “Got her. Straight ahead, turning down the alley on your left.”

“Thank you,” he said, taking off towards the alley. He finally made visual confirmation of the target as he burst out from the crowd, and he sprinted towards Mouse as she ducked into the empty alleyway.

“Bond, wait—” Q’s voice cut out and so did Bond’s vision, as something hard collided with his hip that sent him crashing into the wall. His body crumpled into a heap, his limbs not responding quick enough to slow his fall. He would have cursed, but the wind had been knocked from him, as well. He felt a sharp pain in the back of his head where he’d smashed into the building wall beside him, and he pushed himself up onto his hands and knees with difficulty. 

The revving of an engine somewhere near him gave him enough context to start piecing together what had happened.

He forced his eyes open, ignoring the dips his swimming vision kept taking. Mouse stood right in front of him. Behind her, another woman was perched atop a motorcycle with the visor on her helmet flipped up to reveal her eyes. The woman—Bond guessed this was Click—must have crashed the bike into him, slamming him into the wall with enough force to cause a decent injury.

He shook the fuzziness from his eyes and strained to focus.

“Mouse, we need to leave,” Click was saying. Mouse didn’t spare a glance back at her. She kept her eyes trained on Bond, and she knelt beside him. Some strands of hair had pulled free from her braid during the chase, and she brushed a few behind her ears before she spoke.

“My flash drive, where is it?” She asked calmly. Bond shrugged.

“Q’s already broken into it,” he said. He didn’t say what they both knew: he had found the unnamed file.

“Mouse!” Click hissed, glancing between her and Bond. 

Sirens could be heard starting in the distance. Bond supposed they would catch up soon enough, though he doubted that Click or Mouse would be around long enough to have to deal with the local police department. They were far too good for that.

“Oh, fantastic,” Mouse said, sounding unenthused. She pointed a finger at Bond accusingly. “Glasses better not break my drive.”

Bond smiled at that. He reckoned that, had he the breath to do so, he would have even laughed. He slipped back into seriousness quickly though, and he pushed himself into a sitting position so that he could lean back against the wall.

“We saw your message for Thompson,” he said. He noticed the wince when he spoke the name, and he wondered for a moment just how close Mouse and Thompson had been. 

Mouse’s face snapped back into a carefully distant expression, her eyes hardening.

“And?” She said softly.

“And I believe you.”

“Forgive us if we don’t believe _you,_ ” Click chimed in from behind her. Bond smiled again, doing his best not to grimace as he leaned forward. 

“You don’t have much choice,” he said, though not unkindly. Click looked away from his gaze, settling her eyes instead on Mouse, who seemed deep in thought.

“London Eye, this Thursday at sundown,” Mouse said finally, as the sirens nearby reached a crescendo.

“Mouse! We need to leave, now!” Click snapped.

Mouse held out a hand to Bond. He looked her over for a second. To think, there was blood on her hands, long since washed off, staining her youth as deeply as it had stained his. It scared him, how ready to die she must be at such a young age—it scared him how much of himself he saw in her, how much of Silva.

He took her hand. She pulled him to his feet.

“I’ll see you there.”

And then, she was on the bike, clutching Click’s stomach like a lifeline as the two disappeared down the alley. 

“—ond? Bond can you hear me?” Q’s voice said in his ear, crackling as the comms came back online. 

“I’m here, Q.” He coughed, but he smiled. Q’s voice was a comfort despite the pain. “I’m here.”

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I apologize for the slow progress this week. 
> 
> Would any of you be interesting in getting updates as I write or reading small scenes that I had to cut from the story? I think I may set up a second work in this series to post some of the more domestic extras and short asides that I wrote for this story and had to cut for the sake of pacing. Please let me know if you would enjoy it! 
> 
> Stay safe!


	6. The Fall

The warmth from Q’s tea had long since been leached away by the stale, cold air of the room, but he didn’t really mind.

It had been just over seven hours since Bond had been picked up by a team of MI6 agents.

They’d found him in the alley, slumped over and barely conscious, and had the good sense to bring him straight back to headquarters instead of attempting to pursue the American target. 

Bond had a bruised rib, a mild concussion, and a possibly sprained knee—his ACL to be specific. R, the lovely resident nurse who was far too gentle to be cooped up with spies, had told Q that, if it was in fact sprained, it was only just, and the knee would likely heal without surgery. Q worked very hard to suppress his laugh when she then told him that Bond would need to avoid the temptation to go back to his normal activities or return to chasing down targets without letting his knee heal completely (it was an almost success, even if his chuckle came out as more of a strangled cough). Q knew that overworking injuries was one of Bond’s many specialities, and that it would most definitely cause problems later on.

R had since left, stating that Bond’s condition was stable and that she could be of no further help until he woke up. Now, Q was alone in the small room with only an unconscious Bond and a lukewarm cup of tea to keep him company. 

He knew it was well past the hour that most of the building considered closing time and that he'd be wise to head out soon, but he was no stranger to staying late at work in times of need. Besides, he wanted to be around when Bond woke up from whatever state of unconsciousness that he’d spent the better part of the evening in. Q never liked to let any 00 wake up in Med Branch without anyone else around. 

About ten months ago, he’d come to check in on 003 after she received a particularly nasty injury during what should have been a routine operation, only for her to come to while he was present. She had woken up in a panic, not yet aware of where she was or why she was in pain and still delirious from nearly drowning, until R had stepped in to stop the thrashing woman from pulling out her IV. 003 later confessed to him that waking up injured was always frightening until she could get orientated because, for a handful of terrifying seconds, she didn’t know who had saved her—a friendly face or an enemy looking for information.

He had since tried very hard to be that friendly face. He didn’t want any of the agents waking up alone and afraid, not if he could help it.

So, Q watched over Bond as he finally got the sleep he deserved. He rubbed his neck, wincing as his fingers slid over the tender bruises. He listened to Bond’s breaths in the silence, noticing every little hitch. He watched his lashes flicker, his fingers twitch, the slow rise and fall of his chest, the softness in his face. This was not the Bond he was used to seeing—all sarcastic smiles and eyes of stone. This was a more peaceful Bond, a younger looking Bond. It made Q’s whole being ache. A part of him felt the need to protect whatever innocence still lingered in him, though Q knew there were some pieces of Bond far being saving. 

Bond was not a gentle man. Arrogance could be deadly, but he always wore it like battle armor—he let it take the blunt force of every insult, every scathing remark he ever received. He took it in stride with Q knew that, on some level, Bond was still human and, like everyone else, probably did crave being treated gently, but it was hard to remember when Bond stood strong beside him stoic and impassive, impossible to read.

But this was a different Bond.

Q sighed, rubbing his eyes. He decided that he was going soft with age (or perhaps with fatigue) and turned his attention back to his laptop. There was no table that would be easy to move, so he had his legs crossed to provide a slightly elevated platform for his laptop while he worked. The stiff chair was uncomfortable at best, shoved in the corner of the room, near the door and to the left of the foot of the bed, which was centered along the back wall. R had been kind enough to help him drag it into the room, as none of the rooms actually had sitting areas for visitors. Q supposed it was because very few people in MI6 had people that would want to visit them, and the 00s almost especially had little to no one in their lives outside of work. Perhaps, being alone came with the job. 

Q tried to think about it too much. He didn’t like to be reminded about how alone he really was.

Rolling his neck until there was an audible click, Q tore his unfocused eyes away from his screen. He’d been trying to discreetly sort through the flashdrive that the American had left behind before M stopped him or the idiots from the embassy came back and demanded they turn it over, though he wasn’t exactly sure what he was hoping to find. He’d been at it for hours and sifted through every piece of information Mouse had left for Thompson—a decidedly small amount considering the weight of their accusations. It was giving him a headache.

Q closed his laptop and stood. He set it down on the chair beneath him, then stretched his arms up and shook the drowsiness from his head. He reached down and grabbed his mug of tea from where he’d set it earlier, on the ground right next to the leg of his chair. It had been poor placement, truly. He’d almost kicked it over twice, and then he’d subsequently forgotten about its existence. It was barely even lukewarm at this point. 

He sighed again. He seemed to be sighing a lot recently.

He straightened back out. Bond had been asleep for hours, and he would most likely be asleep for the next five minutes if Q left to go make himself a new cup of tea. He stole one more glance at Bond, committing to memory the image of him peaceful and calm. 

He left the room.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Bond woke up, alone and afraid. 

He was damn good at snapping to attention, quick as a whip, even straight out of sleep, but this time his eyelids felt heavier and his head was throbbing. After shifting slightly, he could tell it wasn’t just his head that hurt. His knee was tense, almost as if he’d overstretched it, and his chest felt tight, making breathing more painful than it should be. Bond guessed he’d ended up with a concussion and maybe a broken rib, though the pain was not quite as bad as the other times he’d cracked a rib. The knee was less familiar. His best guess was that it was sprained, which he’d only ever experienced once in a rock climbing accident of all things when he’d jumped off the wall from a little higher than intended, and his knee had bent out at an odd angle underneath his weight as his feet hit the ground.

He shook his head, riding his thoughts of all that he didn’t know in favor of what he could learn for certain.

Looking around the small room, he discerned that he was in a medical room by both the style of the bed he was laying on and the machines he was hooked up to. There was no IV (thankfully), and he was only connected to a finger clamp that was reading his pulse and a chest pad that he guessed was monitoring his breathing. The brightly lit, white room looked like Med Branch, and the uncomfortably stiff sheets certainly _felt_ on brand for MI6, though he wasn’t entirely sure. The only thing he was sure about was that, wherever he was, he didn’t plan to sit and wait without any information.

He pulled off the chest pad and the finger clamp, ignoring the scream of the machines as he disconnected from them. There was no earwig in his ear anymore, so assumed it had been taken off of him—to prevent him from communicating with MI6 or to put away the equipment he was no longer using? Bond couldn’t be certain just yet. The last thing he remembered was passing out, though not before he made contact with Q.

He turned his head, still trying to figure out if the near empty room was that of Med Branch or somewhere entirely foreign. There was a glass of water at the far end of the bedside table, along with a bottle of painkillers. That was a good sign, at least.

Bond sat up slowly, his body groaning, and moved his legs to the side of the bed. He pushed hard with his hands, ignoring the ache in his ribs and the protest of his right leg. His legs held him for an unsteady second, before they gave out from underneath him. He caught himself by latching onto the bedside table, accidentally knocking the pill bottle under the bed and spilling the water cup. He took a few slow breaths to reorientate himself before bracing his arms against the table and pushing himself back up to standing.

The door across the room swung open, and Bond instinctively reached for a gun on his hip that wasn’t there. None other than Q walked in, holding a piping hot mug of tea and looking rather out of it. Bond nearly collapsed at his feet, but leaned into his good leg to take pressure off his swollen knee.

Q stopped dead in his tracks in the doorway. He looked Bond up and down, then shook his head with a small smile.

“I leave for five minutes and you finally decide to wake up?” He mumbled, crossing the room to set his cup of tea on the chair just beyond the bed. 

Bond tried to step towards him, but it was much more of a clumsy shuffle. His vision swam, and he felt off axis. If he had anything in his stomach, he might have retched, but his stomach settled with eating itself alive instead. He saw Q moving his lips, but his voice was muffled, as if Bond was hearing it from far away. His whole body was protesting.

Bond knew what was coming next. 

“I’m sorry, I think I’m gonna...” And then he slipped. 

He braced himself as best as he could for the impact, but he didn’t hit the ground. Instead, he slumped right into Q, who caught him with a surprised grunt. Bond definitely weighed far more than him, and he feared that he might accidentally pull Q down with him—though would that be such a bad thing? For a moment Bond let himself think about collapsing in a pile of limbs with the quartermaster, their bodies colliding and their hands grasping at each other.

To his credit, Q was busy struggling to support his weight while Bond daydreamed. Q held his weight surprisingly well, though Bond had never doubted that Q was relatively fit beneath his layers of sweater vests and button ups. 

“Bond—” Q slipped his arm around Bond’s waist and pulled his arm around his shoulders— “you should have just stayed in bed, you ninny.”

Bond laughed, but it was strained. 

Q was patient as he led Bond back to bed. He was bearing the brunt of Bond’s weight, so they moved slowly. Bond tried to be careful with his arm that was around Q’s shoulders, not wanting to press on the fresh bruises blossoming on his neck. Whispering words of encouragement every few seconds, Q managed to get Bond across the room and back in bed. Bond sat down heavily, but he kept himself seated upright. It would feel far too vulnerable to be laying down, unguarded, in front of Q, though Bond doubted he would mind in the slightest.

Q turned away from him, his arms releasing from around him, and Bond reached out for him involuntarily.

“Q,” he mumbled, not entirely sure what he was meaning to say before the name slipped out of his mouth.

Q hummed in response, angling his body slightly to look back over at Bond. He paused for only a moment, then he grabbed on to the chair across from the bed and pulled it closer to the bed. 

“How long?” He settled on. 

“Seven hours, just over.” Q settled into the chair, placing his laptop on his lab and cradling the steaming cup of tea in his slender fingers.

“That would make it—”

“About seven thirty in the afternoon, yes,” Q cut in. 

Bond shook his head, trying to refocus himself. He’d been out a decent number of hours then. Impact with the wall must have knocked him better than he originally thought. Bond glanced back over at Q, who had one leg crossed over the other and was scanning over Bond with concern.

“What are you still doing here, then?” Bond asked, but his voice came out stiffer than intended. He could have kicked himself, but at least he’d sound like he was back to his normal self.

“I stayed to make sure that you would see a friendly face when you woke up,” Q said, a little quieter than normal.

Bond blinked at him. He didn’t know what he had been expecting but it definitely wasn’t _that._

Q seemed to realize Bond’s surprise, and he quickly looked away from his inquisitive stare. He pulled his laptop open and started clicking away at it, and Bond nearly smiled. Q was embarrassed.

“That wasn’t necessary,” he said finally. What he didn’t say was how much it touched him that Q cared enough to think about such things. Bond was used to feeling expendable, it was in the job description. This was a new feeling, and he rather liked it.

“Neither are you, but here we are,” Q shot back, still typing without meeting Bond’s eyes. 

Bond laughed at that, a good, deep laugh that reverberated in his stomach. The action caused a flare up of pain in his side, but he ignored it. Q still didn’t look up at him, but a smile was spreading across his face.

“You look like shit,” Bond said, leaning back against the headboard of the bed. It was Q’s turn to laugh at him.

“Would you like me to find you a mirror, 007?”

“No,” Bond said. He should have stopped himself there, but more words tumbled out of his mouth before he could help himself. “I like looking at you a hell of a lot more than I like looking at me.”

Flirting had always come easy to Bond, as both a defence mechanism and a tool, but he actively attempted to avoid ever flirting with Q. He genuinely liked Q, and he definitely didn’t want to scare him off by coming on too strong, even if Bond had a tendency to flirt at everything that breathed to get what he wanted from any given situation. Bond did not want to manipulate or use Q (who was probably too smart for him anyway), nor did he want to lead him on when Bond knew far too well that he wasn’t fit for a relationship—he was too hard to love. This time, however, he couldn’t find it in himself to care—he was too busy watching a very beautiful and flustered Q grapple for a response.

Q’s typing had faltered, and he was staring up at Bond with a flush spreading across his features.

“Bond, are you—”

There was a beep, and Q cursed. He fell silent suddenly, though, and his brows furrowed as he read whatever had popped up on his screen.

“M wants the flash drive. The Americans are asking for it,” Q said, scowling. Bond closed his eyes and thought back to what Mouse had told him. She had said that she’d explain everything on Thursday and, for some unknown and god forsaken reason, Bond was very much beginning to believe her about the setup.

“Find anything useful?”

“Nothing substantial. Are you sure about this?” Q asked, glancing up at Bond skittishly.

“No, but it’s not the most outrageous thing I’ve heard recently.” Bond didn’t have to explain. Q already knew that there was an extreme lack of loyalty in the espionage business, and governments could be cold and ruthless when it came to their employees. The trouble with Silva had proved all of that not too long ago, and Bond knew what it could look like if someone like him went rogue. “Give M the flash drive.”

“Of course, I’m not going to withhold it,” Q said, shaking his head. “You don’t seriously plan to let this drop, do you?”

Bond smiled. It was an otherworldly quality that Q possessed, to be able to think about someone who was fundamentally his enemy and be moved. Q had already made up his mind about Mouse, Bond knew, and he wasn’t going to stop until he had everything figured out.

“I’ll reach out to a friend of mine in the CIA, see what he knows.”

“Good idea,” Q said. He closed his laptop and stood, tucking it under his arm and grabbing his mug from where he’d set it on the floor beside the leg of the table. “I’m going to see if R’s around, she’ll want to check your condition.”

Q walked to the door and swung it open.

“Q,” Bond said. Q paused in the doorway, half turning to face him. “Thank you for being a friendly face.”

Q gave him a tight lipped smile and a nod, and then he was gone.


	7. The File

Bond sat at a bench, alone, watching the sunset across the Thames.  
  


There was something peaceful about taking a moment to breathe and relax, but he remained partially on edge as he waited for Mouse or Click—or both—to arrive and finally tell him what the hell was going on because he was starting to get really annoyed with being kept out of the loop. 

He checked his watch again, but he already knew what time it was. Mouse was late by just under forty five minutes, though Bond didn’t doubt that she was lingering nearby, watching from afar. It was, after all, what they were trained to do. They had been taught to observe and wait, to make a move if, and only if, they deemed it safe to do so. 

He tucked his hands back into his pockets, pulling his jacket tighter around his body as he did so. The evening air was cooling off considerably, and Bond didn’t fancy sitting out in the cold for much longer, though he was forced to wait for Mouse to decide when she was ready to approach him.

He didn’t have to wait much longer, apparently.

“Evening.” 

He didn’t startle at the voice, but he did glance over his shoulder at the newcomer, Mouse, who was in a long coat and had a ball cap pulled low over her eyes. She must have been wearing a wig, because he was certain her hair had not been that long or that, well, blonde earlier.

“Mouse,” he said, nodding to her by way of greeting. She crossed around the bench and sat beside him, though there was enough room for another person between them. Bond supposed she didn’t want to get too close. He respected that.

“Sorry for the delay,” she said. A small smile graced her lips, and she leaned back against the backrest and looked out over the Thames. “Traffic was a bitch.”

Bond returned his gaze to the river, listening to the sounds of London nightlife that would serve to conceal most of their conversation from eavesdroppers.

“You’re lying,” he deadpanned, though he didn’t care all that much.

Mouse laughed softly at that, and the reminder of how young she really was seemed to smack him in the gut. 

“How dare you? Yes, I am.” She pulled a file out from where it had been hidden within her jacket and slid it across the bench to him without any clarification as to the real reason for making him wait. He already knew the answer, of course, but there was no need to voice how little the two of them trusted one another. It remained unspoken between them, hidden in the tension of their shoulders and the selectivity of their speech.

Bond looked down at the file, lifting the top of it just enough to read the top page. It wasn’t exactly the most dense, but there was a good quarter inch of papers within that he didn’t doubt he would be studying that night when he got back to his flat. The first page only had a list of names, some of which, like Thompson, were crossed out in red.

“That’s everything we’ve dug up, including some of the information we borrowed from MI6.”

  
  


“Who are all of these people?” He asked, scanning down the names. He recognized some as American agents that he’d met in passing, the two dead men from Mouse’s team, and a handful of criminals known to be a part of the network of informants that MI6 routinely paid off.

Mouse was slow to respond, clearly hyper aware of the people passing the bench close enough to catch tidbits of their conversation. Bond waited patiently for her to feel comfortable enough to continue.

“Every person on that list has either gone missing or wound up dead,” Mouse said, crossing her legs. “And we’ve been able to connect at least half of them to three separate terrorist attacks in Virginia, Moscow, and St. Petersburg.”

Bond had heard of each one separately, as each one had been monitored and reported upon by agents embedded in America and Russia. He’d also, of course, been given more details regarding the bombing in Virgin that had hit the Pentagon, as Mouse had been directly accused of causing it.

“Terrorist attacks?” Bond asked, unsure of exactly where this was going. There was still a part of him who didn’t fully believe Mouse—she was a spy, after all, and certainly an expert manipulator—but some dots were slowly connecting in his head. He didn’t understand how this made Mouse innocent, or why her team would have been picked for the fall, however.

“About six months ago, the Moscow attack happened, and Russia blamed my government,” Mouse said. She was suddenly getting very tense, and she leaned forward and drew her hands together as her lips pursed into a firm line. “And when the Pentagon was attacked, my team was accused of being a Russian sleeper cell.”

They both fell silent as a couple walked by, laughs ringing loudly into the night air, mingling with the music playing from bars and restaurants and the dull roar of conversations taking place around them. The couple was gone as quick as they came, but Mouse didn’t relax even after they were well past where he and she were sitting on a bench overlooking the river.

“You think it was the same people who bombed both?” Bond inquired, starting to see a stronger connection in her story.

“I know so.” She opened the file back up and slid out a page about two papers down in the stack and turned it so Bond could read the intel on it. Years of pouring over intelligence information told Bond that these were cellphone records. “Click traced the call used to trigger the bomb back to the same number.”

“Why did no one else pick up on that connection?” He tried not to sound overwhelmingly suspicious, but seemed to fail miserably. Mouse bristled as though he’d accused her lying outright. 

“The signal had been bounced around a hundred or so countries and was nearly untraceable,” she said, quiet and quick. Mouse paused, risking a glance at Bond. “She only just was able to make the connection two nights ago, after we stole a software program from MI6, designed by your Quartermaster. We assume the Russian operative your Q shot was after the same software.”

Bond ignored the mention of the other spy and especially didn’t try to think on the fact that she called Q his, instead focusing on the small admission of guilt within her voice. She spoke about Q as if she could care less, but there was a small tightening around her lips as she said his name. Bond guessed that she really did regret having to hurt him, and it lightened his mixed feelings for her.

“So that’s what you stole,” he joked, finally allowing some levity into his tone. Mouse smiled back at him, but she turned her gaze away guiltily.

“Well,” she said, shifting like a child caught in a fib, “that and some intel on a few CIs.”

He nodded slowly, looking back down at the list of names.

“Where do they factor into this?”

Mouse shook her head, frustrated. She barely understood what was happening, he could tell, but she seemed to feel that something was off about that particular aspect of the whole situation.

“A couple gangs caught word of something big about to go down, and those that talked to their handlers about it have all ended up silenced.” She frowned, and Bond could tell that she wasn’t sure if she should share the next piece of information that she was contemplating. He waited patiently, processing the information he’d already been given. “Including one of mine. Kid with the Bratva on the East Coast. He was fourteen.”

“That’s why you were targeted to take the fall for the attack,” Bond said, breezing past the fact that the boy’s death obviously weighed on Mouse. He wasn’t prepared to handle her delicately yet, and he didn’t really believe that she needed to be coddled anyway. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t seen death in her line of work—perhaps not as much as Bond but enough.

“That’s the working theory,” she said, checking her watch. “We knew too much.”

“And what is it that you know,” he asked, wanting to understand what conclusion she’d drawn. Clearly, she had more information (though Bond figured he’d be on the same page as soon as he went through the whole file), and she was settled on a single conclusion, even if some of the finer details were a little fuzzy. “What is the point behind the attacks?”

“In Russia, the bombs helped push emergency protocol into effect. In America, too. It’s like the Cold War all over again,” he voice dropped even lower than what she’d been using all evening, barely above a whisper. Bond could see her going rigid again, and he saw all the puzzle pieces fall into place behind his eyes.

“Someone is looking to start a war.” It wasn’t a question, but the look on Mouse’s face was answer enough.

A deep sense of dread overtook Bond, and he felt a new cold deep into his bones that had nothing to do with the chill of the night air.

“Yes,” she breathed out. 

“Alright. What do we do about it?”

Mouse startled at. He supposed she hadn’t been expecting him to be on board so quickly, but Bond was used to going outside the rules to prevent potentially world altering situations. This certainly qualified.

“How quickly could you be in Estonia?” She asked after a moment of thoughtz

“Tomorrow.”

He would have to call Q and work out the details, but he was certain that he could be on a flight within four hours and touching down before noon tomorrow in Estonia. He didn’t ask why they would need to go there, but he figured that they would likely cross the border into Russia from there. He’d used a similar system once or twice before. 

“I’ll send you the address when your flight touches down.” Mouse stood, circling the bench. She said with a nod, “until then, 007.”

“Mouse.”

She hummed in response, pausing. He didn’t look back at her, but he could feel those sharp eyes on him, burning into the back of his head.

“Nice wig.”

She laughed, warm and real and from deep within her gut, but it faded away quickly. He didn’t need to turn around to know that he was alone now.

He tucked the file into his jacket and sighed, leaning his head back and closing his eyes.

What the hell had he gotten himself into now?

  
  



	8. The Ticket

Sometimes, an early morning London sky was painted in brilliant pinks and oranges; it would start the day with a lovely warmth that warmed Q’s bones almost as much as a fresh cup of Earl Grey. On days like today, however, the sky was oil-black and crackling with electricity—dangerous and ominous—and it chilled him in ways not even tea could thaw.

Q should have paid better attention to the sky’s warning because, as soon as he neared Q-Branch at barley seven in the morning, he could see that a very grim looking Bond was at his desk, trying too much to look like he was relaxed. Q knew that look. Bond was about to do something incredibly reckless, and he wanted Q’s help to do it.

Q paused at the glass doors, breathing in and mentally preparing himself for today’s level of idiocy. He adjusted his grip on his mug of tea and shifted his laptop into the crook of his elbow, tucked tight against his chest, so that he had at least one hand free. Finally, he pulled the doors open with a decidedly neutral expression.

Internally, for as much as he hated being pulled into 007’s less than legal escapades, it also thrilled him each time to be the single person that Bond trusted the most to assist him. Q felt like he was back in his youth, excited about the jolly, fat man who would supposedly fit down the chimney. For all his intelligence and rational, Q had always loved holidays and the magical innocence that came with them (he even still put out a stocking for both of his cats, that he’d eventually fill with catnip).

Bond often made him feel that same type of excitement and, Q supposed, that was magic in its own right.

“Morning, Bond,” Q said as he approached his desk. Bond looked up at him, half startled, but he snapped to attention, quick as a soldier. 

“Morning, Q,” Bond said, smiling. Q nearly groaned, though he’d been expecting exactly this.

James Bond never looked at Q like that unless he wanted something. 

Q knew that this was coming, but he had still held out hope that maybe, just maybe, Bond had come for no reason other than to see Q, to be in his company.

Bond was a handsome man with an intense and rather uncanny ability to get exactly what he wanted nearly all of the time. He was a man that could turn the world gold beneath his gaze and warm Q’s bones despite the cold, still air of everyday life beneath endless, oil-black skies.

But, in the end, he was still a lit match, waiting to burn out. By now, Q was wondering if he’d be burnt by Bond in the process. 

“Alright, Bond, what do you want,” Q asked, circling around the desk and passing Bond so that he could deposit his tea and laptop on the table. He pulled his heavy wool coat off and draped it across the back of his chair. He forced himself to keep his focus down, on his hands, on his belongings, on his desk, until absolutely necessary. He didn’t want to look up at Bond because he knew that, as soon as he grinned like that at him, it was game over for Q.

“I’m taking a slight leave of absence,” Bond said casually, and Q was finally forced to meet his gaze. It was even worse than he’d expected. He was smiling in that way that nearly made Q melt. 

Bond always smiled like he knew something no one else did—small, cunning, viscous—almost wicked, like he’d spent years digging and digging and only recently had carved himself a grave he was willing to bury himself in. His teeth flashed like the light reflected off a warning sign, and something about it was so damn alluring to Q that he might one day just lay down and bare his throat to those teeth that could tear him apart, if only because he trusted Bond so intimately as to believe he’d never hurt him willingly.

“A leave of. . . absence?” Q forced his voice to come out as skeptical, but he could only do so much about the heat slowly rising to his face as he thought about Bond in ways that made him repress shivers.

“A long overdue vacation, of sorts,” Bond’s smile only seemed to widen at Q’s pointed disbelief, and it actually physically pained him. He leaned closer, back braced against the desk, suddenly so close to Q that he could feel his warm breath against his neck. “And I wouldn’t mind having you in my ear for it.”

Bond had always been a portrait of broken bones and bullet fragments, burning from the inside out. Q knew that he could be loved by better men, but—god—did he want them to try and get through Bond first. If only Bond’s flirting was anything more than a game to him (it was much more to Q). 

Despite his better judgment, Q was falling for the one 00 who had never once given him reason to suspect that he was interested in Q. All the other 00s, specifically 005 and 009, had thus far flirted to their hearts content whenever they so pleased. 009 especially made it well known that if Q was ever lonely or looking for a hot body to warm up the bed that he needed only to call. Even 003 had thrown in her chips to whatever game the 00s must be playing on him, until Q had very quietly divulged to her that she was not his type (which was decidedly less female). Since then, she’d served as a less than discreet wing woman for 005, who she never failed to mention was a wonderful man, aside from the whole trained assassin deal.

Bond had never once participated in the game, so it made it all the more infuriating when he _did_ flirt, even if he was using it as a weapon to get what he wanted, because he was the only one Q wasn’t completely unfazed by at this point. 

“You want me to play tech support for you back here, while you go on a dangerous and likely ill fated trip to help Mouse?”

The look on Bond’s face was somewhere between _I want to start some trouble_ and _I have to do this,_ but the motivation behind it hardly mattered. As soon as Bond looked at him like that, Q knew that he’d follow Bond anywhere.

“I never mentioned any mice,” he said, but he wasn’t exactly trying to hide his real intentions. It was clear as day what Bond was going to do, and Q would be damned if he let Bond off the hook for setting out to be reckless on his own.

“You didn’t have to,” Q said, settling into his seat and sighing. He looked up at Bond and shook his head. “If you’re going to be an idiot, _again_ , then I’m going with you.”

Bond’s face hardened immediately, sharpening into an expression somewhere between scoffing and scolding. 

“No.” He set his mouth in a hard line, his jaw flexing. 

“Yes,” Q said. He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back in his seat, trying very hard to look firm in his resolution. He wasn’t fragile, and he certainly didn’t need Bond to treat him as such.

“Last time you got involved with Mouse, you ended up with those.” Bond pointed angrily at Q’s neck, where there were still dark, sickly green blotches of bruising that likely would fade for at least a few weeks. 

Q sat straighter, and he fought hard to not subconsciously reach for his throat, which was still sore when he woke up in the morning.

“My tech, my rules,” Q argued.

“I could just steal it.”

“You wouldn’t dare.” Q was prideful of how low and serious his voice came out, as if he actually believed he had any say in the matter of Bond really did want the equipment. 

Bond seemed surprised momentarily, and Q supposed that it wasn’t normal for his bark to have so much bite, especially when speaking to a 00. He waited while Bond stewed over whatever was going through his head, until finally Bond smiled again.

“Ever been to Estonia, Q?” He asked, after apparently making up his mind. Q’s heart nearly jumped out of his chest due to his excitement; Bond was going to take him with.

“Can’t say that I have,” he said. His tone was neutral, but he was also beginning to smile. It looked like he was going to need to call the elderly woman in the flat next to his to see about her feeding his cats for a little while, again.

“Tell you what,” Bond leaned down, resting a hand against the arm of Q’s chair. “If you can book tickets that get us there by noon, I’ll show it to you, myself.”

“Deal,” Q said, though quieter than he meant. He cleared his throat, turning the chair so that he could look at his desk (and shake Bond off before he fell in too deep). He opened his laptop, ready to start typing.

“You get to make up the lie about why we’re leaving and tell it to M,” Q said, not looking up. Bond chuckled at that, turning from the desk and starting to walk out.

“I’ll see you at the airport in an hour, Q. Bring enough clothes for the week.”

Q could barely contain himself. Not only was he actually going to get to see some action, but he was going to do it alongside 007, the most exciting, beautiful man in the world—

Q groaned into the now-empty room and dropped his head into his hands. 

He was about to spend a week with the most exciting, beautiful, and uninterested man in the world. It was hard enough to stay attentive when watching Bond, oftentimes sweaty and always ruggedly handsome, on the monitors while they worked. Now, he was going to see the live version up close, and it might just be the death of him.

Q sighed loudly and returned to booking tickets. 

What the hell had he gotten himself into now?


	9. The Hotel

They had only just stepped off the plane, each with a duffel bag in hand, when Q and Bond faced their first obstacle.

The obstacle itself was fairly small: they only had to check into their hotel. It was simple enough, but Q had very, very,  _ very  _ limited field experience. This fact was made apparent when they were checking in.

“Name?” The front desk attendant had asked in English, probably after overhearing the two exchange a few words in English instead of Estonian while waiting in line.

“Whitman,” Bond supplied. Q had briefed him on the names everything would be under while still on the plane. 

“Of course, one moment, please,” the man said, and he went back to typing at his computer. Bond allowed his eyes to wander the room, scanning for exits and blind spots, when the attendant spoke again, sliding two keycards towards Bond. “Your keys, Mr. Whitman.”

“Yes, thank you,” Q said, snatching the keys, when Bond didn’t answer right away. The attendant looked between the two, an eyebrow raised.

“You are Mr. Whitman, also?” He asked, clearly disgusted by what he was implying. Bond stepped closer to Q, using the hand not holding his duffel bag full of clothes and supplies to wrap an arm around Q’s waist.

“Yes, he’s my husband.” Bond stared down the attendant, waiting for the man to make a comment about it. 

He felt Q tense beneath his touch, and he felt momentarily deflated by the reaction. Did he really repulse Q that much—to the point that Q was uncomfortable with even pretending to love him?

He shut those thoughts in the back of his mind, instead focusing on the attendant, who still looked over the two with a vague distaste.

“No problem, sir.”

Bond guided Q away from the front desk and towards the elevator, letting his hand slip from Q’s waist to his hand. It was a nervous sort of hand-holding, and Bond ran his thumb over Q’s knuckles in an attempt to coax him into relaxing. He didn’t release Q’s hand until the elevator doors closed, leaving them alone and way from prying eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Bond blurted, suddenly uncomfortable with how uncharacteristically quiet Q was being. Q, to his credit, while still a little tense, looked bewildered by the apology.

“What for?” He asked, voice soft. Bond stared straight ahead, shifting his weight from his heels to the balls of his feet.

“For making you uncomfortable.”

“What? You didn’t—” Q spluttered, his eyebrows drawing together. He shook his head, switching his duffel bag from one hand to the other. “Bond, nothing you did was wrong.”

Bond finally turned to meet Q’s eye, but he didn’t know exactly what he was looking for. Maybe he expected to see some hint that Q was lying to him, or the repulsion that he’d feared earlier. He saw only blue eyes filled with more kindness than he could ever comprehend or deserve.

“You just seemed tense.”

“Trust me when I say, that had nothing to do with you holding my hand or calling me your husband,” Q said, shaking his head. He rolled his shoulders back, clearly battling with himself before he spoke his next words. “It has everything to do with how that man reacted.”

That certainly caught Bond off guard. Bond was used to dealing with people who scoffed at him for liking both men and women, but he supposed he’d never thought about Q’s experience with homophobia—or lack thereof due to his sexual orientation. It definitely fit. Q being straight explained why he never took up 005 or 009 on their offers to share his bed.

“I suppose homophobia isn’t something you’d be prepared for,” Bond said, as the elevator dinged and the doors slid open. They were on the twelfth floor, a ways up to hopefully avoid an ambush but still close enough to the ground that they’d be able to use the stairs to make a quick exit.

“Bond, that’s not what I-oh for fucks sake,” Q muttered, following as Bond led them to the door of their room. As soon as they were safely within the privacy of their room, Q dropped his bag and rounded on Bond with a determined expression. “I’m perfectly accompanied to homophobia, you absolute moron. I was worried about  _ you _ .”

Oh.

Bond didn’t have a good reply to that. He wished his next words would have been something suave. He wished they would have been something supportive, or at least something that showed Q that Bond was very much okay with this revelation, even as he reminded himself that it didn’t mean that Q had any particular feelings for him.

“So you like…” Bond trailed off. He sounded like an idiot. He hated it.

Q sighed, shrugging his shoulders.

“Yes.”

Bond nodded his head.

“Alright.”

“Alright,” Q echoed. 

That was the end of the conversation.

Thankfully, the awkwardness of it all faded rather quickly. They settled into a comfortable silence. About an hour passed, and they simply existed near each other, content with being only within the other’s orbit. They were sitting at the kitchen table, in front of the floor to ceiling windows that looked out over the street and towards the buildings across the way. Bond was cleaning his gun, had nearly finished, in fact, and Q was typing away at his laptop.

“Tell me a secret.”

Q’s words caught him off guard after nearly an hour of silence, and the boyish innocence of them almost got Bond to crack a smile. 

He paused what he was doing, fingers gently resting on the pieces of his gun that he was beginning to reassemble.

“What kind of secret?” He asked, buying himself more time to stare at his face, to analyze his features for a clue as to his true intent. Surely there was more to this than Q let on. Was this intended to hold more weight than Bond was meant to realize? 

Q peered over at him silently from where he was sitting across the table, long and slender fingers keeping busy by picking at the splintering wood in front of him. 

It struck Bond how young Q looked in that moment. There was no tension in his shoulders or heavy ache on his face, but that sorrowful look in his eyes sobered his appearance. One so youthful should not wear such aged eyes; it just wasn’t right (Bond did not think he would be around long enough to see how Q would wear old age).

It broke his heart. 

“Any kind,” Q said, breathlessly, as if staring at Bond choked him up faster than a firefight, faster than a mission ever could. He didn’t yet know if that was a good thing or not.

He quickly finished with his gun and, after ensuring he had a full clip and that the safety was on, shoved the gun back into his shoulder holster that he’d yet to take off.

Bond did not know which secret to give to Q, though his heart was heavy with several.

_ You are beautiful in the way gunfire is beautiful. You burn brightly and dangerously, and I think you might kill me. I wouldn’t change a thing about you for all the money in the world. I could spend eons just in your orbit, satisfied with nothing more than your presence in my life. _

“I have no secrets,” he said without even believing himself. He couldn’t tear his eyes off of Q, though he knew he needed to look away before his actions gave away his thoughts.

Hope for something more was deadly in his profession, yet Bond clung to it like it was a life preserver (and, oh, he was drowning). It chafed his skin as he held on for dear life, but he wore the scars like brands of honor.

Perhaps Bond had hoped to one day rival the countless praises bestowed on the agents before his time, who had lived and died for Queen and Country in the golden age of espionage. The past laughed at him. Those before him had died for their titles; he still breathed.

No one gave Q the right to tear down Bond’s walls.

(He let them crumble at his hand anyway.)

Bond had thought that he could fight forever—why hadn’t he realized? No peace was ever achieved without a few casualties, and he was more afraid of losing Q than he was of losing himself at this point. This hope was going to be the death of him.

He let those words die in his mouth before they reached his lips, instead holding steady as Q laughed and shook his head. That smile made Bond weak.

“Liar.” Q pushed himself away from the table, leaning his chair back onto two legs.

_ You make me question the way I was trained. You make me wonder about a future that I know I can’t have. You force me to bend and break and grow and  _ hope _.  _

_ I think I am in love with you. _

“I hate flying,” he said, an easygoing smile sliding across his face to hide the ache he felt. Q shared in his smile, shaking his head (was that amusement or disappointment?) before readjusting so that his chair was once again safely planted on all four legs.

“Is the famous 007 afraid of heights?” Q teased, leaning forward and staring up at him. It took everything in Bond to meet that gaze and hold his eyes steady. 

“Something like that,” he conceded. “Though I distinctly remember you not being so fond of it either.”

Q tutted, shaking his head, but the smile had returned. He opened his mouth to say something more, and Bond leaned towards him, elbows resting on the table. Bond was strung out on Q’s voice, waiting to hang off of every word. For a moment, he didn’t really care about how it would come across—the moment was tender and maybe it was okay to be vulnerable for just a handful of seconds if it meant bringing himself closer to Q.

Whatever Q had been about to say was drowned out by the hail of bullets shattering through the window.

Both men scattered. Q ducked into the hallway between the kitchen and the bedroom, while Bond dove low to the ground behind the sofa. Bond breathed in deeply, pulling his gun from its holster, instinctively looking over at Q to ensure he was alright. 

The cacophony of gunfire was too loud for Bond to hear what Q was saying, but he seemed to be cussing at something. He was gripping his right arm, just below the shoulder, and there was a blossom of blood seeping into his shirt. Q had been hit. 

The firing settled down, ceasing entirely after only twenty seconds or so of chaos. 

“Q,” Bond said, louder than intended due to the ringing in his ear. “Make for the door, now!”

Q listened, scampering past the open part of the room and Bond, who was quickly on his feet as well. He risked lagging behind to snag Q’s laptop from the kitchen table and his jacket off of the back of his chair, which had been knocked over in his mad dash for cover. Then, he was out the door like a shot.

He found Q waiting for him in the hallway, and Bond wrapped his jacket around him.

“Stairwell, to the left, do your best to hide the blood.”

He didn’t ask if Q was alright. He knew better.

Q gritted his teeth and nodded, his face set in determined lines. Bond led the way down the steps to the first floor, where the lobby was filled with other patrons scrambling to get out of the building due to the sound of gunfire. He couldn’t risk losing Q in the crowd, so he holstered his gun and grabbed Q’s uninjured bicep and held tight. They maneuvered through the mess of bystanders and out onto the street in a matter of moments, and then Bond started leading them down the street, away from the scene and into the lively downtown nightlife.

“Bloody hell,” Q muttered, clearly in pain. Bond tried not to think about it, putting an arm around Q’s shoulder to help hide the wound from the public eye. With his other hand, he gripped Q’s laptop close to his chest, knowing it was likely their greatest asset at the moment. He dipped his chin away from the street and towards Q to shield his face from onlookers. 

“Slow down,” Bond whispered. “Whoever did this is going to be watching for us. We need to blend in.”

Q did not have the same training as him, Bond knew, but he’d seen him on a monitor pull this trick a thousand times, so it made sense when Q straightened his back and leaned a little more into him, helping to give the appearance that the two were a couple out for a stroll. Bond would have been impressed if he wasn’t so damn focused on how natural it felt to have Q pressed beside him, as if the curve of his body had been molded to fit Q’s. 

Bond glanced behind them, scanning for anyone who appeared out of place. A tall, dark-haired man was about twenty paces back, his right hand hidden in his jacket. It didn’t take an expert to figure out that he likely had a gun in that hand, nor that he was clearly following Q and Bond.

It was a chase, then.

Without warning, Bond took off running, pulling Q alongside him, his arm slipping down to grab Q’s wrist. People dodged them with mild complaints, but Bond didn’t have time to worry about the public’s opinion of him or Q. They just ran, and the man chased them. 

There was suddenly quite a bit more shouting, and Bond reckoned that the man had pulled his gun from his jacket, which was scaring those around them. Bond took a sharp left down an adjacent street, and his guess was proved correct as the sound of a gunshot pierced the night air. People were screaming and scattering again, and Bond took the half second of confusion to yank Q into a narrow alley between two of the buildings nearest to them.

The dark-haired man lost them in the chaos, as Bond intended, and sprinted right past where the two were hidden. When Bond looked back at Q, his breath caught.

They were nearly chest to chest in the slender alleyway, and Bond suddenly couldn’t breathe. He didn’t know what gave him the strength to look Q in the eye, but once he did, he couldn’t look away. 

_ Green,  _ Bond mused.  _ There’s flecks of green in the blue of his eyes. _

“How’s the arm?” Bond barely whispered. Q gave him a small look, and Bond realized that he was still holding Q’s wrist. He let go slowly, fingers uncurling one by one, and Q reached back up to grip his arm tightly in an attempt to stop the bleeding.

“Clean shot, through and through. I need to clean it,” Q said. Bond knew that the logical approach that Q was taking was a necessary coping mechanism for him, so he didn’t bother trying to tell Q that that’s not exactly what he meant. He tore his eyes away to scan the area. The dark haired man was coming back towards them, but he seemed to be checking the alleyways this time around. 

Q sighed. “Time to go?” 

“Time to go.”

Bond gestured for Q to go ahead of him, and the two began jogging single file down the alleyway. They were almost out the other end when, along with the faint sirens that were growing steadily nearer, a gunshot could be heard. He ducked instinctively, though he didn’t exactly have anywhere to take cover.

They broke out into the street with a new sense of urgency, and it was Q’s turn to lead as they sprinted towards a busy intersection. Bond could hear the heavy footfalls of the man behind them, and he pushed himself to run faster. He passed Q a little bit, forcing the other man to follow him into the intersection. The moment their feet left the sidewalk and hit the tarmac, another shot rang out. 

Bond pushed himself to run even faster, and he slid over the top of a car that screeched to a halt with a honk as soon as the driver saw them in the road. Q was not so quick, and he tumbled to the ground as the car bumped his leg. 

“Q!” 

Bond reached out and grabbed Q’s outstretched hand. Another car skidded towards them. Bond yanked. Hard. He refused to let go until to let go, even as the man following came nearer, as a cafe honked at him to get out of the way. He finally pulled Q to safety and tucked him behind his body protectively, before immediately pulling out his own gun and leveling a shot at the man chasing them. It was quick and clean, clinical even. 

He turned to ask if Q was alright, his breathing heavy, when he froze again. Q was holding tight to Bond’s waist with his uninjured arm so, when he had turned, he came face to face with Q for the second time in only a matter of minutes. Bond knew he should pull away, but he let his hand fall from Q’s shoulder to the small of his back. They both stayed there for a moment, trying to catch their breath while they held each other. 

The sound of sirens spurred them back into action. Bond kept a hand on Q’s uninjured arm. 

They ran.

About a street over, a car cut them off, slamming on the breaks right in front of them. Bond had to stabilize Q, who nearly tumbled right into the car as he struggled to stop his momentum. 

The window of the car rolled down, and Bond and Q were both equally shocked to see a grinning Mouse in the driver’s seat.

“Need a ride, boys?”


End file.
